la 


OF  CAUF.  LIBRARY.  M>8 


" Pussyfoot5'  Johnson 

Crusader  —  Re  for  met — 
A  Man  Among  Men 


BY 
F.  A.  McKENZIE 

Author  of  "  Korea's  Fight  for  Freedom,"  etc. 

INTRODUCTION    BY 

Dr.  WILFRED  T.  GRENFELL 

ILLUSTRATED 


\r 


NEW  YORK  CHICAGO 

Fleming  H.  Revell  Company 

LONDON         AND         EDINBURGH 


Copyright,  1920,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  17  North  Wabash  Ave. 
London :  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:  75  Princes  Street 


A  WORD  OF  APPRECIATION 

By 
WILFRED  T.  GRENFELL 

ANY  tribute  I  can  pay  to  "Pussyfoot" 
Johnson,  I  consider  it  a  privilege  to  pay. 
He  is  a  sportsman  in  the  very  best 
English  sense  of  the  term,  and  that  appeals 
to  all  good  Englishmen.     Every  true  sports- 
man possesses  the  Christ  spirit — he  "  counts 
not  himself." 

When  Mr.  Johnson  was  flour-bagged,  ridden 
on  a  hurdle,  and  had  one  of  his  eyes  put  out 
by  the  villainous  liquor  traffic — for  it  was  that, 
and  nothing  else  that  caused  the  outrage — he 
smiled,  and  said  it  was  an  accident.  It  was* 
But  it  was  something  worse ;  it  was  a  blunder. 
When  Mr.  Johnson  was  to  appear  on  a  public 
platform  after  the  cowardly  assault  made  upon, 
him,  his  enemies  expected  to  see  him  wearing 
a  "  black  patch  "  to  invite  sympathy,  as  did 
Long  John  Silver  in  Treasure  Island.  But  they 
reckoned  without  their  man.  "  Pussyfoot  ** 
was  a  real  sportsman.  He  needed  no  molly- 
coddling methods  to  bolster  up  his  ideals.  He 
refrained  from  appearing  in  public  until  he 

5 


2131448 


6         A  WORD  OF  APPRECIATION 

could  wear  such  a  good  artificial  eye  that  his 
audience  found  it  difficult  to  beleve  he  had  ever 
lost  his  real  one.  That  we  loved.  It  was  the 
straight,  sporting  spirit. 

"  Where's  the  seventy-five  millions  we  Eng- 
lish in  good  faith  put  into  your  American 
breweries  ?  "  I  heard  one  man  screaming  at 
him — an  ugly-looking  villain,  with  the  flag  of 
his  vile  profession  hoisted  in  his  nose  and 
face. 

"  You  never  put  five  cents  in  American 
breweries,"  answered  Mr.  Johnson. 

"  That's  a  lie— You're  a  liar,"  bawled  Mr. 
Boozy  face. 

"  It  was  German  breweries  in  America  that 
got  your  money,"  snapped  back  "  Pussyfoot." 
That  sort  of  an  answer  reaches  the  heart  of  a 
crowd. 

The  liquor  traffic  is  a  dirty  business,  a  filibus- 
tering business,  and  enslaving  business,  and  all 
honor  to  the  men  engaged  in  resolutely  down- 
ing it.  I  used  to  love  the  orations  of  the  late 
J.  B.  Gough — they  made  me  weep  and  boil 
alternately.  But  for  these  days  I  prefer  the 
verity,  the  directness  and  the  sense  of  humor 
of  "  Pussyfoot  "  Johnson. 

I  have  come  to  love  Mr.  Johnson,  just  as, 
when  a  boy,  I  loved  Mr.  Greatheart.  He  is  a 
good  soldier  of  Jesus  Christ.  God  bless  him ! 


A  WORD  OF  APPRECIATION         7 

"  Pussyfoot "  Johnson's  career  has  been 
marked  by  many  vicissitudes,  but  he  can,  at 
least,  be  congratulated  on  the  character  and 
ability  of  his  present  biographer.  Not  only  is 
Mr.  McKenzie  a  man  deeply  versed  m  public 
affairs  and  specially  qualified  for  setting  them 
forth,  but  one  in  genuine  unsimulated  sympathy 
with  the  temperance  reformer  and  his  work. 
His  sketch  of  Mr.  Johnson's  life  is  in  eveiy 
way  authentic.  He  has  had  access  to  all  the 
latter's  private  papers,  note  books,  etc.,  from 
which  the  facts  he  presents  in  the  present 
volume  are  taken.  Last,  but  not  least,  Mr. 
McKenzie  was  Chairman  of  the  London  meet- 
ing which  culminated  in  the  scenes  of  riot  and 
disorder,  during  the  enactment  of  which, 
"  Pussyfoot "  Johnson  lost  his  eye.  He  very 
modestly  refrains  from  his  share  in  the  pro- 
ceedings and  merely  refers  to  himself  as  "  the 
Chairman."  Seeing  that  Mr.  McKenzie  ran 
just  as  much  risk  and  stood  in  just  as  much 
danger  of  personal  injury  as  Mr.  Johnson,  this 
word  of  recognition  is  certainly  due  him. 

W.T.G. 


The  Smile  That  Disarms  Critics 


PREFACE 

THE  Prohibition  movements  rank  among- 
the  most  remarkable  crusades  of 
modern  times.  That  is  a  fact  hardly 
to  be  denied  even  by  those  who  differ  most 
strenuously  from  it.  The  majority  of  the 
English-speaking  communities  of  the  world,, 
and  some  non-English-speaking  nations,  have 
voluntarily,  within  a  few  years,  renounced  a 
favorite  and  established  habit — a  habit  which., 
literature,  tradition  and  custom  had  caused  the- 
majority  of  people  to  regard  as  one  of  the 
pleasures  of  life. 

Alcohol  had  been  for  generations  untold  an 
anodyne  in  grief,  a  symbol  of  joy,  a  medicine 
for  the  invalid  and  comfort  for  the  mourner.. 
It  accompanied  men  literally  from  their  birtl* 
to  their  grave.  No  christening  was  complete 
without  it;  every  birthday  was  made  the  oc- 
casion for  the  drinking  of  healths :  a  wedding 
feast  without  strong  drinks  would  have  seemed 


10  PREFACE 

like  a  banquet  without  meat;  and  before  they 
laid  a  corpse  in  its  final  home  the  mourners 
gathered  together  and  decorously  drank  wine. 

Then  came  the  movement  against  alcohol. 
Men  ceased  to  drink,  at  first  individually. 
After  a  time  they  banded  themselves  in  so- 
cieties and  formed  an  easy  butt  for  novelists 
and  satirists.  Next  they  started  to  cut  off  the 
sale  of  drink  in  their  own  communities,  vil- 
lage by  village,  town  by  town,  state  by  state. 
More  recently  whole  nations  agreed  volun- 
tarily to  stamp  out  the  traffic.  To-day  men  are 
dreaming  of  a  "  dry  "  world,  and  it  is.  a  dream 
that  may  come  true  in  our  time. 

Of  all  those  recently  associated  with  the  pro- 
hibition movement  the  name  of  only  one  has 
become,  up  to  now,  a  household  word 
throughout  the  world — "  Pussyfoot  "  Johnson. 

Fortune  brought  me  in  touch  with  Mr.  John- 
son in  an  exciting  and  adventurous  hour.  Our 
experiences  then  led  to  further  meetings.  In 
time  I  came  to  see  the  man  as  he  is,  and  to 
understand  why  he  has  won  the  place  he  holds. 

When  it  was  suggested  by  others  that  I 
should  write  this  brief  sketch  of  his  life,  Mr. 


PREFACE  11 

Johnson  hesitated.  He  would  prefer  to  work 
for  to-morrow  and  leave  the  adventures  of 
yesterday  to  themselves.  "  I  do  not  believe  in 
a  biography  that  is  all  praise,"  he  once  said 
to  me.  "  The  only  perfect  beings  that  I  know 
are  in  Heaven."  His  only  request  was  that  I 
should  write  as  a  critic  rather  than  a  eulogist. 
"  I  have  learned  a  lot  from  criticism,"  he  de- 
clared, "  and  I  have  a  lot  more  to  learn  yet." 

This  narrative  is  a  plain  record  of  some  of 
the  main  incidents  in  the  adventurous  life  of 
an  adventure-loving  man  who  has  been  a 
fighter  from  his  youth  up.  I  have  come  to 
admire  William  E.  Johnson  because  of  his 
directness,  his  simplicity,  his  courage,  and  his 
shrewd  capacity.  It  is  a  good  thing  to  observe 
the  life  of  a  man  who  goes  straightly  and 
strongly  on,  with  his  eyes  set  at  one  mark,  a 
man  who  is  neither  weakling  nor  pietist,  trim- 
mer nor  ranter,  who  can  and  does  give  hard 
blows,  and  who  is  ready  to  take  equally  hard 
blows  without  malice. 

"  Pussyfoot "  Johnson  won  the  admiration 
of  two  continents  by  his  cheerful  courage  when 
he  lost  his  eye  as  the  result  of  a  students' 


12  PREFACE 

"  rag  "  in  London.  The  qualities  that  he  re- 
vealed then  were  not  assumed  for  the  moment, 
but  were  part  of  the  man.  I  do  not  profess  to 
share  all  his  views,  but  I  am  proud  to  have 
the  honor  to  tell  of  the  life  work  of  a  real 
"  white  "  man. 

For  the  facts  and  the  demonstration  de- 
scribed in  connection  with  Mr.  Johnson's 
"  Welcome  Home "  as  narrated  in  Chapter 
XIII,  credit  and  appreciation  is  given  to  Mr. 
J.  H.  Larimore,  ex-Mayor  of  Westerville, 

Ohio. 

F.  A.  McK. 


CONTENTS 

I.    FROM  NEW  YORK  TO  NEBRASKA  17 

II.    THE  REAL  START       ...  29 

III.  BACK  TO  NEW  YORK  .       .       ...  46 

IV.  LIFE  IN  THE  "  BAD  LANDS  "     .  65 

V.    How   "  PUSSYFOOT  "  WON  His 

NAME 81 

VI.    MORE     ADVENTURES     IN     THE 

WEST        .....     102 

VII.   JOHNSON  RESIGNS       .       .       .118 
VIII.    THE  CAMPAIGN  FOR  NATIONAL 

PROHIBITION     .       .       .       .127 

IX.    LAUNCHING  THE  WORLD  CAM- 
PAIGN         138 

X.    How   "  PUSSYFOOT  "   LOST   His 

EYE  152 

XL    THE  " BOGEY  MAN"  BECOMES 

A  POPULAR  HERO   .       .       .164 

XII.    ENGLAND  "  DRY  "  BY  1930  .       .      177 
XIII.    THE  WELCOME  HOME  186 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 
PAGE 


William  Johnson Title 

The  Smile  That  Disarms  Critics  .  .  8 
"Pussyfoot"  Johnson's  "North  Star"  20 
Santa  Clara  Pueblo  Temperance  Leaders  106 
Mr.  Johnson  Opening  the  Essex  Hall 

Debate 152 

The  Morning  After  "  The  Rag  "  .  .164 
Drinking  the  Health  of  Mr.  Johnson  .  178 
London  Welcomes  Johnson  .  .  .184 
Johnson's  Arrival  Home  .  .;  .  .190 


FROM  NEW  YORK  TO  NEBRASKA 

WILLIAM  EUGENE  JOHNSON 
was  born  in  the  village  of  Cov- 
entry, New  York,  on  March  25th, 
1862.  He  was  the  son  of  a  farmer,  and 
descended  from  good  New  England  stock. 
His  father's  family  was  from  Connecticut,  his 
mother's  (the  Stiles)  from  Massachusetts; 
and  they  could  trace  their  line  back  for  two 
hundred  years  of  pure  Yankee  stock.  An 
ancestress  on  his  mother's  side  was  hanged 
as  a  witch  in  Salem  during  the  great  witch- 
craft craze  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. 

His  grandfather  had  come  to  Coventry  in 
the  days  when  Central  New  York  was  a  wil- 
derness, walking  all  the  way  from  Colchester, 
Conn.,  to  spy  out  the  land,  that  he  might 
settle  there  if  he  found  it  suitable.  He  dis- 
17 


18          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

covered  a  good  plot  of  eighty  acres  owned  by 
a  land  company,  and  bargained  for  it,  with 
the  company's  representative,  a  Frenchman. 
He  had  saved  $300,  which  he  had  left  in  the 
care  of  his  brother  in  the  old  home  town. 
A  deal  was  made  with  the  land  company,  and 
the  grandfather  walked  back  to  Colchester  for 
his  wife,  his  ox-team  and  the  $300.  On 
reaching  home  he  found  that  his  brother  had 
got  drunk  and  had  spent  all  the  money.  Un- 
daunted, he  took  his  ox-team,  his  axe  and 
his  wife,  and  travelled  once  more  to  Coventry, 
to  tell  the  Frenchman  that  he  could  not  com- 
plete his  bargain  because  his  money  had  gone. 

"How  much  money  have  you?"  the  agent 
asked. 

"  None,"  was  the  reply. 

"  You  take  the  land  and  pay  for  it  when 
you  can,"  was  the  unexpected  response.  The 
land  agent  even  helped  to  fit  him  out  with 
a  barrel  of  salted  pork. 

It  was  on  that  land  that,  two  generations 
later,  William  E.  Johnson  was  born. 

The  grandfather  had  two  sisters,  Clarissa 
and  Jerusha,  both  missionaries  among  the 


FROM  NEW  YORK  TO  NEBRASKA  19 

Cherokee  Indians  in  Arkansas.  A  medical 
missionary  there,  Dr.  Marcus  Palmer,  mar- 
ried Clarissa,  and  when  she  died,  married 
Jerusha.  He  lost  his  sight,  and  came  back 
East  to  Fitchville,  Ohio.  Here  he  was  en- 
gaged apparently  as  a  preacher,  but  his  main 
work  was  very  different.  He  was  an  active 
worker  in  the  Anti-Slavery  campaign,  and  he 
ran  a  station  on  the  famous  "  Underground 
Railway,"  by  which  escaping  negroes  made 
their  way  in  safety  to  the  North. 

The  Palmers  took  a  negro  boy,  Henry  M. 
Wynder,  into  their  home,  and  educated  him 
so  that  he  was  able  to  become  a  teacher  in 
a  private  school  kept  by  their  daughter.  He 
was,  for  a  time,  William  E.  Johnson's  teacher. 
Heredity  and  early  home  training  mould  the 
man.  William  E.  Johnson,  reformer,  received 
his  bent  in  the  roomy  old  farmhouse  at  Smith- 
ville  Flats,  to  which  his  family  moved  when 
he  was  two  years  old,  and  where  he  passed 
his  childhood.  It  was  a  temperance  farm- 
house all  the  time.  The  Johnsons  had  had 
their  pew  in  the  Presbyterian  Church  near  by, 
as  long  as  men  could  remember.  The  ideals 


20          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

of  the  old  anti-slavery  campaigners  were  bred 
in  them. 

The  lad  was  brought  up  to  an  open-air 
life.  He  early  learned  to  master  horses,  which 
is  not  a  bad  beginning  in  the  art  of  learn- 
ing to  master  men.  The  last  time  he  was 
thrown  off  a  horse  was  when  he  was  five 
years  old.  His  old  friends  still  recall  him 
as  a  square-toed,  sturdy-shouldered  youth,  full 
of  physical  and  mental  energy,  always  ready 
for  a  fight,  and  going  through  with  it  to  a 
finish. 

Johnson  himself  declares  that  the  supreme 
influence  in  his  life  was  his  mother.  She  was 
"just  a  mother."  S&e  lived  to  a  ripe  old 
age,  and  her  son  to  this  day  always  carries 
her  portrait  with  him.  It  is  to  her,  he  de- 
clares, that  he  owes  all.  People  who  knew 
lier  describe  her  in  her  last  years  as  "  an  old, 
old,  white-capped  lady,  supremely  proud  of 
her  son's  battle  for  an  ideal,  supremely  con- 
fident that,  no  matter  what  the  overwhelming 
obstacles,  he  could  not  fail.  When  she  died 
there  passed  a  fine  woman  who  had,  more  than 
anyone  else,  implanted  in  the  son  the  ideas 


"  Pussyfoot  "  Johnson's  "  North  Star  " 


FROM  NEW  YORK  TO  NEBRASKA  21 

and  the  steadfastness  that  had  made  him  suf- 
fer for  his  ideals,  and  laugh  at  his  prosecu- 
tors, wth  a  gameness  that  almost  disarmed 
them." 

The  son  paid  this  tribute  to  her  in  the  dedi- 
cation of  one  of  his  books: 

"To  my  Mother. 
From  the  beginning  she  has  been  an 
eternal   inspiration  to  higher  and 
better  things." 

Johnson  when  a  very  young  man  spent  two 
winters  in  his  home  State  of  New  York 
"  teaching  school,"  taking  out  part  of  his  pay- 
ment in  board,  as  was  the  custom  in  country 
districts  at  that  time.  Most  houses  had  one 
room  facing  the  northwest  for  the  preacher 
or  the  teacher  when  they  visited  their  district. 
In  some  homes  the  "  preacher's  room "  was 
not  so  carefully  looked  after  as  in  others,  and 
sleeping  in  a  damp  bed  gave  the  young  fellow 
a  severe  illness  which  left  him  a  physical  wreck 
and  with  an  asthma  from  which  he  suffers  to^ 
this  day. 

He  went  out  West  to  regain  his  strength — 


22          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

to  a  ranch  near  Fremont,  Neb.,  owned  by  his 
father  and  his  uncle,  and  there  put  in  a  sum- 
mer of  open-air  work,  increasing  his  weight 
from  1 20  to  165  pounds  and  fully  recovering. 
As  winter  approached  there  was  nothing  more 
for  him  to  do  on  the  ranch,  so  he  thought  that 
he  would  teach  school  again.  He  called  on 
the  County  Superintendent  of  Education  and 
asked  for  work.  The  superintendent  informed 
him  that  all  teachers  had  to  pass  an  exami- 
nation and  that  the  examinations  for  that  win- 
ter were  already  over. 

"  Couldn't  you  hold  a  private  examination 
for  me  to-morrow  ?  "  asked  Johnson. 

The  superintendent  agreed,  and  fixed  next 
morning  for  the  ordeal.  He  handed  John- 
son a  list  of  the  subjects  in  which  he  must 
pass.  One  was  physiology.  Now,  the  lad 
from  New  York  knew  nothing  of  physiology. 
He  was  not  even  quite  sure  what  it  was;  but 
he  went  to  a  second-hand  bookstall,  bought 
an  old  text-book,  sat  up  all  night  studying, 
and  next  morning  passed  his  examination  tri- 
umphantly. 

There  were  only  two  schools  vacant,  and 


FROM  NEW  YORK  TO  NEBRASKA  23 

Johnson  was  warned  not  to  try  for  one  of 
these,  as  he  would  not  like  it.  The  first  school 
was  twenty-five  miles  away.  He  borrowed  a 
horse  and  set  out  for  a  ride  across  country 
to  see  the  authorities  there.  The  horse  was 
a  real  bucking  broncho.  It  took  two  men  to 
hold  it  when  he  mounted,  and  once  in  the 
saddle  there  came  a  right  royal  fight  between 
man  and  beast.  But  Johnson  had  not  been 
brought  up  on  a  farm  for  nothing.  The  horse 
did  not  throw  him.  And  by  the  time  the  day 
was  over  even  the  broncho  had  lost  its  "  pep," 
for  man  and  horse  rode  sixty-four  miles  that 
day.  He  found  when  he  got  to  the  first  vil- 
lage that  the  place  was  already  filled,  so  there 
was  nothing  for  him  to  do  but  to  turn  round 
and  ride  another  forty  miles  to  the  second 
district — the  place  he  had  been  warned 
against. 

This  district  was  the  home  of  a  number 
of  German-American  families.  The  local  au- 
thorities told  Johnson  that  he  could  try  his 
hand  at  teaching  school  there  if  he  liked,  but 
on  their  terms.  "We  will  pay  you  $40  a 
month  salary,  but  we  will  only  pay  it  if  we 


24          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

are  satisfied  that  you  are  maintaining  proper 
-discipline.  We  are  to  be  the  sole  judges  as 
to  whether  you  are  or  not." 

The  young  teacher  readily  agreed.  A  form 
of  contract  was  drawn  up.  He  signed  it, 
scarcely  troubling  to  read  it,  and  was  duly 
installed. 

He  soon  learned  what  was  in  front  of  him. 
There  had  been  no  school  at  this  place  for 
two  years,  because  no  teacher  was  willing  to 
undertake  the  work.  For  two  years  before 
that  no  one  had  succeeded  in  remaining  there 
for  more  than  about  a  week.  The  boys  prided 
themselves  on  their  ability  to  beat  any  teacher 
in  that  time. 

School  opened,  and  thirty  pupils  came — 
twenty-eight  boys  and  two  girls.  Johnson 
.studied  them  carefully  as  they  clumped  in, 
their  wooded  shoes  clattering  on  the  floor. 
They  were  an  ordinary-looking  group.  He 
-anticipated  no  difficulty  with  any  except  one. 
a  young  giant  as  old  as  himself,  of  amazing 
muscular  development  and  weighing  quite  220 
pounds.  Johnson  knew  if  it  came  to  a  straight 
'trial  of  strength  between  himself  and  that 


FROM  NEW  YORK  TO  NEBRASKA  25 

youngster,  who  would  win.     So  he  made  his 
plans  accordingly. 

Here,  as  in  many  other  parts,  the  school 
teacher  was  school  janitor  also.  Johnson  pro- 
vided himself  with  a  good  heavy  poker  for 
the  stove,  and  saw  that  the  poker  was  always 
within  reach. 

For  the  first  few  days  nothing  untoward 
happened.  Then  one  afternoon  the  teacher 
noted  that  his  dangerous  pupil  was  throwing 
a  book  at  another  lad. 

"  Cut  that  out,"  said  Johnson  shortly. 

"Haw!  You  shut  up! "  retorted  the  young- 
giant.  "  We've  had  enough  of  you.  You've 
been  here  long  enough.  Get  out ! "  And  he 
rose  from  his  seat  and  made  for  his  teacher,, 
the  others  jumping  up  at  the  same  time  and 
following  in  his  wake. 

There  was  no  more  trouble  in  that  schooL 
A  fortnight  afterwards  the  young  giant  re- 
turned to  his  place  in  class,  the  meekest  of 
the  meek.  The  authorities  paid  Johnson  $40 
a  month  without  a  question.  They  admitted 
they  had  at  last  found  a  man  who  could  main- 
tain discipline. 


26          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

From  school  Johnson  went  to  Nebraska 
State  University  at  Lincoln,  working  his  own 
way  through  by  doing  all  kinds  of  odd  jobs. 
He  remained  at  the  University  for  three  years, 
but  did  not  graduate.  His  career  from  an 
academic  point  of  view  was  not  a  great  suc- 
cess. 

The  new  West  was  in  the  making;  fresH 
population  was  pouring  in.  All  kinds  of  enter- 
prises were  afloat.  A  man  had  to  be  ready 
to  put  his  hand  to  anything,  from  doing  chores 
to  maintaining  law  and  order.  A  local  news- 
paper badly  needed  a  circulation  manager.  It 
had  a  subscription  list  of  three  hundred. 
Johnson  took  up  the  post,  and  by  hard  work 
raised  the  number  to  about  three  thousand. 

Just  about  this  time  one  of  the  periodical 
land  booms  which  swept  over  the  West  struck 
Nebraska.  These  land  booms  are  the  mad- 
dest form  of  gambling.  Values  go  up — on 
paper — out  of  all  reason.  When  the  boom  is 
at  its  height  a  plot  in  a  back  street  in  a  coun- 
try town  will  sell  for  nearly  as  much  as  a 
small  plot  in  Michigan  Avenue  in  Chicago, 
or  in  the  City  of  London.  "  A  "  buys  a  plot 


FROM  NEW  YORE  TO  NEBRASKA  27 

for  $100.  He  sells  it  to  "  B  "  next  day  for 
$200.  Someone  else  pays  "  B  "  $20  for  a 
short-time  option  to  buy  the  plot  at  $300, 
and  succeeds  in  selling  it  for  $350,  and  so  on. 
For  a  time  everyone  makes  money,  and  there 
is  an  appearance  of  amazing  prosperity.  Out- 
side speculators  are  drawn  in.  Costly  under- 
takings are  launched,  and  the  boomsters-in- 
chief  metaphorically  "  light  their  cigars  "  with 
$5  bills.  This  is  the  time  for  the  wise  man 
to  step  from  under,  but  very  few  people  are 
wise.  A  slump  always  follows  and  leaves  a 
sadder  and  wiser  community  behind  it. 

Johnson  bought  an  option  on  a  plot  of  land 
for  a  few  dollars,  and  sold  it  next  day  at 
a  profit  of  $150.  Why  should  he  go  on  work- 
ing hard  and  making  a  scanty  living  as  circu- 
lation manager  when  he  could  pick  up  hun- 
dreds of  dollars  in  that  way? 

He  threw  up  his  job  and  opened  an  office 
as  real  estate  dealer.  He  bought  and  sold, 
dickered  and  bargained,  and  secured  an  in- 
terest in  all  kinds  of  enterprises,  from  a  Turk- 
ish bath  to  central  town  lots,  until  at  the  end 
of  a  few  months  he  was  worth  $30,000.  Like 


28          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

nearly  everyone  else,  he  kept  on  too  long, 
was  caught  in  the  slump  and  finished  up  worth 
$4,000  less  than  nothing!  He  had  married 
during  this  time  Miss  Lillie  M.  Trevitt,  of 
Lincoln,  and  found  a  wife  ever  ready  to  stand 
by  him  in  dark  hours,  to  cheer  when  things 
looked  most  threatening,  and  to  take  her  full 
share  of  toil.  There  was  a  stiff  row  to  hoe 
before  he  recovered  his  financial  stability  again. 
He  took  seriously  to  journalism,  became  man- 
ager of  the  Nebraska  News  Bureau,  and  here 
the  way  opened  up  that  led  to  his  real  life- 
work. 


II 


WILLIAM  E.  JOHNSON'S  life  has 
been  so  bound  up  with  the  move- 
ment for  the  prohibition  of  the 
manufacture  and  sale  of  alcoholic  drinks  that 
it  is  impossible  to  appreciate  the  one  with- 
out knowing  something  of  the  other.  The 
modern  prohibition  movement  took  its  rise 
in  the  State  of  Maine  over  eighty  years  ago. 
A  committee  of  the  Maine  Legislature  re- 
ported in  1837  that:  "The  traffic  (in  strong 
drink)  is  attended  with  the  most  appalling 
evils  to  the  community.  It  is  an  unmitigated 
evil.  Your  committee  are  not  only  of  the 
opinion  that  the  law  giving  the  right  to  sell 
ardent  spirits  should  be  repealed,  but  that  a 
law  should  be  passed  to  prohibit  the  traffic 
in  them,  except  so  far  as  the  arts  or  the  prac- 
tice of  medicine  may  be  concerned." 

Neal  Dow,  the  son  of  a  rich  Quaker  farmer, 
29 


30          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

began  a  vigorous  agitation  to  have  this  opin- 
ion embodied  in  the  law,  and  the  first  Pro- 
hibition Act  was  passed  in  Maine  in  1846.  It 
was  an  imperfect  and  experimental  measure, 
only  the  sale  of  ardent  spirits,  not  wine  or 
beer,  being  forbidden.  The  act  was  a  fail- 
ure. Learning  from  experience,  Mr.  Dow, 
five  years  later,  framed  a  more  drastic  bill. 
This  was  carried  through  the  State  Legisla- 
ture in  two  days  and  was  actively  enforced 
immediately  in  spite  of  much  opposition  and 
some  rioting. 

The  Maine  example  was  quickly  followed, 
and  by  1855  thirteen  States,  including  New 
York  and  Pennsylvania,  had  adopted  prohibi- 
tion. Then  came  a  time  of  reaction.  In  some 
States  the  law  was  not  enforced.  The  nation 
became  more  and  more  absorbed  in  the  battle 
over  slavery  and  in  the  growing  cleavage  be- 
tween North  and  South.  Prohibition  was  de- 
clared in  some  States  unconstitutional,  a  deci- 
sion which  was  reversed  some  years  later.  In 
State  after  State  prohibition  was  repealed  and 
in  some,  where  it  was  retained,  it  was  only 
enforced  in  a  half-hearted  fashion. 


THE  REAL  START  31 

The  movement  received  a  set-back  from 
which  it  took  many  years  to  recover.  Maine 
remained  faithful,  but  even  in  Maine  enforce- 
ment of  the  law  was  irregular.  In  the  early 
'eighties  the  new  West  launched  a  fresh  cam- 
paign, the  State  of  Kansas  in  particular,  pre- 
senting an  example  of  successful  prohibition 
which  was  to  have  wide-reaching  effects.  The 
fight  was  much  harder  now  than  in  the  early 
days.  The  liquor  trade  had  become  thoroughly 
organized  and  had  reduced  the  bribing  of  Leg- 
islatures and  the  manipulation  of  the  press  to 
a  fine  art. 

The  prohibitionists  at  this  stage  aimed  to 
secure  not  merely  the  passage  of  State  laws 
forbidding  the  sale  of  drink,  but  the  passage 
of  State  Constitutional  Amendments  making 
prohibition  an  integral  part  of  the  Constitu- 
tion of  each  State.  One  large  section  of  tem- 
perance reformers  made  what  is  now  gen- 
erally recognized  as  a  mistake  in  establishing 
a  separate  political  party  of  their  own,  the 
Prohibition  Party,  rather  than  in  working 
through  the  established  parties. 

A  number  of   well-intentioned  people,   in- 


32          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

eluding  many  men  of  great  influence,  believ- 
ing prohibition  to  be  impracticable,  introduced 
measures  for  the  more  effective  control  of  the 
drink  trade.  High  license,  the  chief  of  these, 
was  fathered  at  first  by  many  prohibitionists  as 
being  a  step  towards  their  desired  goal.  The 
principal  planks  of  this  platform  were  a  re- 
duction in  the  number  of  saloons  and  the  pay- 
ment by  each  saloon-keeper  of  a  high  license 
fee.  In  place  of  being  a  step  towards  pro- 
hibition, high  license  was  quickly  found  to  be 
the  most  effective  weapon  for  fighting  it.  It 
gave  the  taxpayer  a  financial  interest  in  main- 
taining the  drink  traffic,  the  license  fees  go- 
ing towards  the  reduction  of  taxes.  The  dis- 
pensary system  originated  in  South  Carolina; 
under  it  the  State  itself  became  the  retailer 
of  intoxicants. 

When  the  historian  of  the  future  comes  to 
analyze  the  forces  that  lay  behind  the  pro- 
hibition movement  he  will  find  one  of  the 
chief  among  them  to  be  the  revolt  of  decent 
citizens  against  the  influence  of  the  saloon  in 
public  life.  The  saloon-keeper  was  not  the 
old  "mine  host"  of  ancient  times,  the  land- 


THE  REAL  START  33 

lord  who  cared  for  the  comfort  of  man  and 
beast,  but  the  seller  of  strong  drinks,  directly 
concerned  with  selling  as  much  strong  drink 
as  possible  and  with  nothing  else.  It  was  to 
his  interest  to  control  the  police,  so  that  they 
might  not  be  too  active  against  disorderly  con- 
duct of  his  customers.  In  order  to  make  his 
control  more  effective  he  became  partner  with 
the  local  "  bosses."  His  overlords,  the  brew- 
ers and  distillers,  did  the  same,  only  on  a  big- 
ger scale.  The  saloon  became  the  centre  for 
the  worst  elements  in  national,  state  and  local 
politics.  It  was  partner  with  the  gambling 
hell  and  house  of  ill-fame.  The  decent  citi- 
zen, who  wanted  to  "clean  up"  corruption 
and  immorality  in  his  locality,  found  the  sa- 
loon his  greatest  enemy.  The  saloon-keeper 
had  no  real  friends.  Even  the  men  who 
patronized  him  most  freely  scorned  him  and 
were  often  the  first  to  fight  for  his  elimina- 
tion. 

A  struggle  was  developing  at  this  time  in 
Nebraska  which  was  to  have  a  profound  ef- 
fect on  Johnson's  future  life.  Nebraska  was 
the  first  State  in  the  Union  to  adopt  high 


34          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

license.  In  1889  the  prohibitionists  made  ready 
to  put  up  a  real  fight  for  a  constitutional  pro- 
hibition amendment  and  Johnson  threw  him- 
self into  the  campaign.  He  was  well  under 
thirty  years  old  at  the  time,  full  of  energy 
and  of  great  physical  strength.  His  exper- 
iences as  a  newspaper  man  had  taught  him 
ingenuity  and  resource.  If  he  had  to  fight 
the  devil  he  believed  in  fighting  him  with 
fire,  and  turning  his  weapons  on  the  forces 
of  evil  themselves. 

Johnson  was  brought  into  the  reform  move- 
ment by  heredity,  through  the  influence  of 
Andrew  G.  Wolfenbarger,  a  Lincoln  attorney, 
by  the  example  of  his  mother,  and  by  his  asso- 
ciation with  a  remarkable  character,  "  Bishop  " 
George  B.  Skinner.  The  "  Bishop "  was  a 
livery  stable-keeper  in  Lincoln,  who  was  given 
his  nickname  because  of  his  episcopal  appear- 
ance, his  white  hat  and  long  whiskers.  He 
had  a  picturesque  and  variegated  past  and 
his  language  was  noted  for  its  variety  and 
profanity,  even  in  the  West.  He  reformed, 
quit  drinking  and  cut  off  all  his  vices  except 
swearing.  He  started  a  temperance  move- 


THE  REAL  START  35 

ment — the  Red  Ribbon  Club — which  was  for 
the  time  famous. 

One  Sunday  afternoon,  while  at  college, 
Johnson  was  at  Skinner's  hall  with  a  dozen 
other  students.  There  had  been  music  and 
speeches,  and  an  appeal  was  made  for  men  to 
come  up  and  sign  the  pledge.  Johnson  turned 
to  his  companions.  "  What  is  the  matter  with 
you  fellows  ?  "  he  demanded.  "  Come  up  and 
sign." 

•"  We  will  if  you  do/'  someone  declared. 

"  Come  right  along,"  Johnson  responded. 
He  led  the  way  to  the  front,  ten  or  twelve 
following  him.  They  had  not  gone  half-way 
before  the  organ  and  viola  struck  up  the 
Sankey  hymn: 

"  See  the  mighty  hosts  advancing, 
Satan  leading  on." 

There  came  a  quick  burst  of  laughter  from 
the  audience.  The  advance  paused.  But  from 
that  time  Johnson  was  openly  committed.  He 
was  one  of  the  reformers. 

He  gave  quick  proof  of  his  qualities.  There 
had  been  a  great  deal  of  talk  of  wholesale 
corruption  by  the  "  wet "  leaders.  The  sub- 


36          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

ject  was  a  matter  of  common  gossip.  No  one 
had  any  real  proofs.  Johnson  set  about  ob- 
taining them. 

He  had  some  letter-heads  printed,  "John- 
son's Pale  Ale,"  and  wrote  to  a  number  of 
prominent  liquor  dealers  and  others  who  had 
taken  a  leading  part  in  the  anti-prohibition 
campaigns  in  other  States,  asking  them  how 
best  prohibition  could  be  defeated  in  Ne- 
braska? This  circular  ran  as  follows: 

"DEAR  SIR, 

"  There  is  a  prohibition  amendment  pending 
in  this  state,  and  I  would  like  to  have  your  ad- 
vice as  a  member  of  the  trade.  You  have  had 
experience  in  fighting  prohibition  in  your  state, 
and  you  know  what  the  best  plans  are. 

"  Please  tell  us  frankly  what  you  think  we 
should  lay  the  most  stress  on  in  Nebraska,  for 
accomplishing  the  best  result  for  the  liquor  trade. 
It  is  my  opinion  that  if  the  Nebraska  dealers 
will  take  up  high  license  and  show  its  advantages 
as  a  revenue  measure,  and  a  plan  for  regulating 
the  traffic,  etc.,  they  will  get  the  support  of  the 
best  people,  and  even  some  preachers.  What  do 
you  think  of  this? 

"What  effectiveness  is  there  in  using  anti- 
prohibition  documents?  What  class  of  docu- 
ments are  best  ?  Do  you  know  of  any  documents 


THE  REAL  START  37 

that  will  have  weight  against  prohibition  among 
the  religious  people? 

"  How  should  campaign  funds  be  distributed 
for  the  best  results?  Is  it  worth  while  to  hire 
speakers  or  to  engage  in  debates  with  the  pro- 
hibitionists? I  think  myself  that  the  trade  will 
accomplish  more  by  spending  the  bulk  of  the 
funds  among  newspapers,  and  for  quiet  work 
with  men  of  influence,  especially  politicians. 
Give  me  your  best  plan  for  working  through 
political  machinery,  and  especially  how  to  silence 
the  pulpit  and  press." 

The  organizers  of  the  liquor  dealers'  cam- 
paigns fell  into  the  trap,  and  wrote  him  long 
letters  describing  their  plans.  One  of  the  chief 
among  them,  Mr.  Harry  P.  Crowell,  of  Phila- 
delphia, suggested  that  Johnson  should  come 
and  see  him.  "If  you  are  going  to  have  a 
fight,  and  were  to  come  here  I  would  give 
you,  I  think,  in  three  hours,  more  than  I  could 
write  in  a  week."  Johnson  did  not  go  him- 
self, but  sent  a  deputy  and  Mr.  Crowell  opened 
up  in  conversation  his  whole  plans,  how  he  had 
raised  money,  how  much  he  had  paid  to  dif- 
ferent politicians  for  their  support,  his  meth- 
ods with  the  newspapers,  and  the  like.  "  Make 
a  plea  for  high  license  and  the  battle  is  yours 


38          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

— that  is,  if  you  have  the  papers  and  politicians 
with  you — and  you  can  get  them  if  you  have 
the  money,"  was  the  substance  of  his  advice. 

The  publication  of  these  letters  and  of  the 
interview  caused  an  immense  sensation  and 
had  the  effect  of  drawing  national  attention  to 
Johnson's  work.  The  New  York  Voice,  the 
leading  organ  of  the  Prohibitionists,  offered 
him  an  engagement  during  the  campaign  in 
the  West.  He  at  once  became  a  marked  man. 
Every  abusive  abjective  that  could  be  strung 
together  was  used  in  describing  him.  Jour- 
nalism in  the  West  was  very  full-blooded  in 
those  days.  Johnson's  opponents  would  start 
by  describing  his  personal  appearance  in  any- 
thing but  complimentary  terms.  Then  they 
would  turn  to  his  morals  and  his  manners. 

Apparently  the  only  good  thing  they  could 
find  in  him  was  his  personal  courage,  and  this 
even  his  bitterest  enemies  never  attempted  to 
deny.  "Whatever  may  be  said  about  this 
prohibition  detective  Johnson  to  his  disadvan- 
tage, it  must  be  admitted  that  he  is  a  brave 
man,"  wrote  the  Lincoln  Daily  Journal. 

Johnson  gave  his  enemies  as  good  as  he  got. 


THE  REAL  START  3£ 

He  was  in  real  fighting  form.  He  smiled 
when  his  opponents  hit  him,  and  then  punched 
back.  Here  for  example  is  his  description  of 
Omaha,  where  he  was  engaged  in  a  fierce  pro- 
hibition battle: 

"  Omaha  has  degenerated  into  an  incorporated 
band  of  outlaws.  It  presents  to-day  the  most 
extraordinary  spectacle  ever  witnessed  in  the  pol- 
itics of  any  state.  The  whole  city  is  in  a  state 
of  moral  stupor  and  mental  delirium  tremens. 
It  has  absolutely  lost  sight  of  every  consideration 
of  decency,  fairness  and  respect  for  law  which 
usually  govern  the  relations  of  men  in  social  and 
business  life  and  is  wallowing  in  the  filthy  em- 
brace of  the  saloon  while  it  fortifies  itself  by 
abuse,  villification  and  slander  on  the  street  and 
in  the  press,  and  defies  the  law  by  a  criminal 
use  of  the  boycott  in  business  circles.  Claiming 
a  majority  of  six  to  one  against  prohibition,  it 
is  in  a  crazy  apprehension  lest  the  prohibitionists 
will  intimidate  license  voters,  impede  registra- 
tion and  voting  and  inaugurate  a  reign  of  terror. 
It  is  a  truly  remarkable  combination  of  crime, 
degradation  and  absurdity.  If  it  were  not  damn- 
able, it  would  be  pitiable.  If  it  were  not  pitiable, 
it  would  be  ridiculous." 

The  fight  at  Omaha  was  of  unusual  inter- 
est. The  big  Nebraska  city  was  the  centre 


40          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

of  the  %ht  over  prohibition.  Johnson  went 
there  to  help  his  side.  One  of  the  first 
things  he  did  was  to  make  a  careful  study  of 
the  conditions  under  which  the  ballot  for  the 
Constitutional  Amendment  would  be  taken. 
He  discovered  that  the  last  census  returns  had 
been  padded  to  an  amazing  extent  He  put 
enumerators  to  work  and  found  in  one  ward 
three  times  too  many  names.  The  census  re- 
turns made  Omaha  appear  as  a  city  of  139,000 
people.  Johnson  declared  that  the  real  popu- 
lation was  not  over  115,000.  This  estimate 
was  subsequently  confirmed.  The  bogus  names 
had  been  added  to  enable  the  liquor  party 
to  cast  a  number  of  dummy  votes  on  their 
side. 

Johnson  published  these  facts.  Once  more 
the  vials  of  wrath  opened  on  him.  He  was  a 
"  prohibition  liar,"  "  conscienceless,"  "  notor- 
ious," "  shady,"  "  a  slimy  serpent,"  and  so  on 
and  so  forth. 

His  articles  dealing  with  the  situation  were 
published  in  the  New  York  Voice  and  the 
Lincoln  Call.  Thousands  of  copies  of  these 
papers  containing  the  exposure  were  mailed 


THE  REAL  START  41 

to  the  people  of  Omaha.  The  anti-prohibition- 
ists, however,  were  in  control  of  the  machin- 
ery of  administration  and  they  discounted 
Johnson's  activities  by  holding  up  the  copies 
sent  for  sale  and  by  delaying  the  distribution 
of  the  mailed  issues  of  the  Voice  until  after 
the  election  was  over. 

A  few  days  before  the  election  Johnson 
proposed  that  he  and  his  friends  run  a  tem- 
porary daily  paper  of  their  own.  The  lead- 
ing newspaper  in  Omaha  was  the  B,ee.  The 
new  paper  was  to  be  called  the  Bumble  Bee. 
It  was  a  real  fighting  sheet.  Ten  thousand 
a  day  were  printed  and  boys  were  sent  out 
to  distribute  them  in  the  streets.  By  now  the 
anti-prohibitionists  were  concentrating  their 
fury  upon  Johnson,  who  had  become  the  out- 
standing figure  in  the  campaign.  Day  by  day 
the  papers  attacked  him,  in  some  cases  directly 
urging  the  people  to  do  away  with  him.  His 
friends  seriously  feared  that  he  would  be  mur- 
dered. Mr.  V.  O.  Strickler,  a  prohibition  law- 
yer, went  to  the  newspaper  offices,  and  warned 
the  editors  of  the  probable  results  of  what  they 
were  doing.  He  told  them  that  they  had  no 


42          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

right  to  stir  up  bitter  animosity  against  John- 
son. He  was  a  newspaper  correspondent  and 
in  no  sense  a  detective,  simply  reporting  for 
his  paper.  "If  Johnson  is  murdered  while  in 
this  city  it  will  be  because  the  papers  have 
inflamed  the  public  mind  against  him,"  he  told 
them.  Johnson  himself  was  the  least  disturbed 
man  of  all.  He  quietly  went  on  with  his  work, 
producing  his  paper  day  by  day. 

At  first  the  other  side  did  not  see  how  to 
stop  him.  On  the  last  day,  however,  a  group 
of  men  lay  in  ambush  in  side  streets  waiting 
for  the  boys  as  they  emerged  from  the  print- 
ing offices  with  their  Bumble  Bees.  They  got 
them,  took  their  papers  away,  gave  them  a 
kick  and  a  cuff,  and  told  them  to  "  Cut  off 
home."  All  did  so,  except  one  youngster,  who 
hurried  back,  showed  a  wound  in  his  head  and 
told  how  he  had  been  treated* 

Johnson  saw  red.  He  gave  the  boy  some 
more  papers  and  sent  him  out  a'gain.  "  I  will 
see  that  you  are  not  hurt,"  he  said,  and  he 
followed  after  the  lad,  who  was  scarcely  out 
of  sight  of  the  office  before  a  street  corner 
man  jumped  on  him.  That  street  corner  man 


THE  REAL  START  43 

must  have  imagined  the  next  second  that  a 
cyclone  had  struck  him.  He  was  scarcely  on 
the  lad  before  Johnson  was  on  him. 

Johnson  admits  that  he  could  never  recall 
afterwards  what  happened  during  the  next  few 
minutes.  A  very  limp,  battered-looking  op- 
ponent was  left  on  the  pavement.  A  crowd 
gathered  and  the  man's  friends  made  a  rush 
for  Johnson,  who  cleared  them  off  by  a  vig- 
orous use  of  his  fists,  and  got  his  back  to  a 
telegraph  pole.  A  sympathizer  tried  to  get 
near  him  to  hand  him  a  revolver  so  that  he 
might  defend  himself.  Johnson  had  a  revolver 
of  his  own  in  his  pocket,  but  he  had  no  inten- 
tion of  using  it.  At  that  moment  a  police 
patrol  came  up.  His  friend  was  arrested,  and 
while  Johnson  was  defending  himself  from  at- 
tacks in  front  someone  got  behind  the  telegraph 
pole  and  caught  him  by  the  neck,  so  that  he 
was  soon  firmly  secured. 

The  police  took  him  to  the  station.  On  the 
way  Johnson  suddenly  remembered  his  own 
revolver  and  managed  to  slip  it  quietly  from 
his  pocket  up  his  sleeve.  Inside  the  station 
he  was  roughly  searched  down  to  see  if  he 


44          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

had  any  arms  on  him.  Then  the  policemen 
and  station  hands  turned  on  him.  They  re- 
garded him  as  fair  sport. 

The  young  reformer  turned  sharply  on 
them.  "You  mutts,"  he  said.  "You  thick 
heads !  Talk  about  catching  anything !  Why, 
you  couldn't  catch  the  itch  if  you  tried.  You 
felt  me  down  for  a  gun  and  found  nothing. 
Look  here!"  He  took  his  revolver  out  of 
his  sleeve  and  handed  it  over  to  them.  "  You 
couldn't  even  find  that  on  me." 

This  formed  the  basis  of  a  fresh  charge  of 
carrying  dangerous  weapons  and  threatening 
the  police  with  them.  It  was  Saturday  night. 
Johnson  was  not  even  allowed  to  communi- 
cate with  his  friends  to  obtain  bail.  When 
some  of  them  forced  their  way  in  and  de- 
manded that  they  be  allowed  to  go  bail  for 
him,  the  police  refused. 

Then  a  fresh  party  arrived  on  the  scene, 
the  father  of  the  boy  who  had  been  injured. 
He  too  saw  red  and  was  full  of  fight  against 
the  police  and  the  politicians  who  had  hired 
the  men  who  had  hit  his  son.  When  the  case 
came  to  court  everyone  wanted  to  compro- 


THE  REAL  START  45 

mise  it,  everyone,  that  is,  except  Johnson. 
"  I  don't  want  to  be  let  off,"  he  said.  "  I  beat 
that  man  up  and  I  want  it  to  go  on  record 
that  I  did.  He  deserved  a  beating  up.  I  did 
it  and  I  will  pay  a  fine  for  it."  He  did  not 
go  as  far,  however,  as  another  noted  char- 
acter in  a  different  trial,  who  paid  double  the 
fine  that  had  been  fixed  so  that  he  might  pay 
in  advance  for  the  opportunity  of  doing  it 
again. 

Johnson  put  away  and  carefully  preserved 
in  a  place  of  honor  the  official  receipt  for  his 
fine. 


No.  1647  $7-5° 

POLICE  COURT. 
State  of  Nebraska 

Omaha,  Neb.,  Nov.  7,  1890 
W.  E.  Johnson. 

Received  of  W.  E.  Johnson 
the  sum  of  Seven  &  50/100  Dollars. 
Fines  and  costs  in  the  above  entitled  case. 

LEE  HELSLEY. 

Police  Judge 
Original 


Ill 

BACK  TO  NEW  YORK 

JOHNSON  was  now  a  busy  and  success- 
ful newspaper  man,  well  known  and  in 
some  quarters  well  hated  in  the  West, 
and  with  established  connections  in  New  York. 
He  had  become  famous  in  his  own  sparsely 
settled  section  of  the  country,  both  as  an  or- 
ganizer and  a  writer. 

He  did  a  great  deal  of  work  about  this 
time  for  a  Kansas  City  paper,  the  Sunday  Sun, 
edited  by  Henry  L.  Preston.  The  Sun  was 
out  to  attack  anyone  or  anything,  no  matter 
how  highly  placed  or  how  influential,  when 
such  person  or  party  was,  in  the  opinion  of 
the  editor,  open  to  such  action.  No  busi- 
ness, social  or  political  reasons  were  allowed 
to  keep  anything  out  of  the  paper.  Naturally 
it  had  a  very  stormy  career,  having  to  fight 
46 


BACK  TO  NEW  YORK  47 

about   three   hundred   libel   actions   in   three 
years. 

Johnson  was  one  of  its  most  fiery  and  racy 
writers,  and  citizens  of  Dallas,  Texas,  and 
elsewhere  have  still  lively  memories  of  the 
storms  he  raised  and  the  fights  he  fought. 

He  had  been  keeping  up  his  work  for  the 
New  York  Voice,  and  at  the  end  of  1895  he 
received  an  invitation  to  join  the  staff  of  that 
paper  at  New  York.  He  did  so,  remaining 
there  until  1900,  when  the  paper  was  reor- 
ganized and  transformed  into  the  New  Voice, 
its  headquarters  being  shifted  to  Chicago. 

Johnson  came  prominently  to  the  front  in 
New  York  in  1896  over  the  examination  then 
being  made  into  the  administration  of  the 
Raines  Law.  Under  this  law,  which  had  been 
introduced  by  Senator  Raines  with  a  genuine 
desire  to  increase  temperance,  various  reforms 
were  introduced.  Saloons  were  compelled  to 
close  on  Sunday.  Intoxicants  could  be  sold 
on  that  day  only  in  hotels  and  when  served  with 
meals,  etc.;  the  abuse  came  in  defining  what 
constituted  a  hotel;  the  outcome  was  the  ad- 
dition of  a  few  sleeping  rooms  as  an  adjunct 


48          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

to  the  common  saloon,  and  the  serving  of  a 
single  sandwich  was  considered  a  meal. 

After  his  arrival  in  New  York,  Johnson 
examined  the  "  Raines  Law  "  hotels  carefully. 
The  Senate  of  the  State  of  New  York  or- 
dered an  inquiry  into  the  working  of  the 
Raines  Law,  and  Johnson  was  called  as  a 
witness.  He  gave  first  a  number  of  statistics 
which  he  had  collected,  showing  that  as  soon 
as  the  law  came  in  force  there  had  been  an 
increase  of  eighty- four  per  cent,  of  arrests 
for  drunkenness  and  seventy- four  per  cent,  for 
all  causes  under  the  new  law.  He  then  pro- 
ceeded to  bring  further  evidence  proving  that 
the  new  type  of  hotels  had  become  great  cen- 
tres for  immorality.  He  told  the  results  of 
personal  inquiries.  Then  he  went  on  to  give 
a  number  of  opinions  he  had  collected  from 
prominent  people.  Soon  Senator  Raines  had 
had  enough  and  suggested  that  Mr.  Johnson 
should  stop.  "  I  would  like  first  to  give  some 
letters  from  police  captains,"  Johnson  replied. 
,  These  letters  from  the  police  captains  were 
still  more  damning. 

Then  he  went  on  to  describe  how  he  had 


BACK  TO  NEW  YORK  49 

investigated  faked  clubs  opened  under  the 
Raines  Law  and  how  he  had  found  that  they 
were  simply  places  for  unlimited  drinking. 

Johnson's  evidence  caused  a  sensation.  It 
was  so  precise,  so  documented,  so  free  from 
surmise  and  full  of  facts  that  it  was  impos- 
sible to  ignore  it.  His  testimony,  to  quote  the 
reporters  present,  "  annoyed  Senator  Haines, 
who  gave  evidence  of  temper  in  questioning 
the  witness."  His  crowning  blow  was  a  let- 
ter from  a  famous  police  officer,  Captain  Max 
Schmittberger : 

"The  fact  is  that  under  the  Raines  Law,  so- 
called  Raines  Law  hotels  are  permitted  to  keep 
open  all  night  and  dispense  liquor  provided  a 
sandwich  is  served.  The  back  rooms  of  many 
of  those  have  become  sinks  of  iniquity,  where 
women  of  both  colors  and  of  the  lowest  type 
resort  and  ply  their  calling,  and  many  of  these 
places  are  nothing  more  than  disorderly  houses. 
The  police  are  powerless  to  a  certain  extent,  and 
where  arrests  have  been  made  upon  evidence 
obtained  in  my  precinct  for  proprietors  of  such 
place  for  keeping  disorderly  houses,  they  have 
escaped  by  the  plea  that  the  people  registering 
at  these  places  registered  as  man  and  wife,  and 
that  the  character  of  the  woman  was  unknown 


50          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

to  the  proprietor.  Although  I  keep  the  strictest 
watch  on  these  cases,  I  have  succeeded  in  only 
one  case  in  having  the  proprietor  indicted  by  the 
grand  jury. 

"  MAX    SCHMITTBERGER, 

"  Captain,  Twentieth  Precinct." 


This  letter  was,  as  one  subscriber  said,  "  The 
blow  that  nearly  killed  father."  At  the  close 
of  the  day  Senator  Raines  himself  practically 
acknowledged  that  his  measure,  which  was  in- 
tended to  take  the  saloon  out  of  politics  and 
preserve  the  sanctity  of  the  Sabbath,  had  re- 
sulted in  the  establishment  of  large  numbers 
of  doubtful  resorts  of  all  kinds.  "  Lo !  The 
Religious  Sleuth,"  was  the  headline  of  one 
New  York  daily  above  Johnson's  evidence. 

It  was  recognized  that  a  new  kind  of  man 
had  come  into  the  reform  business,  a  man 
who  got  up  his  facts  as  carefully  and  as  ac- 
curately as  the  most  precise  prosecuting  coun- 
sel, who  dealt  in  facts  and  left  emotional  ap- 
peals to  others. 

This  same  quality  in  Johnson's  work  was 
again  strikingly  demonstrated  by  his  investi- 
gations into  the  South  Carolina  dispensary 


BACK  TO  NEW  YORK  51 

system.  This  system  was  introduced  by  Sen- 
ator Benjamin  R.  Tillman  to  defeat  prohibi- 
tion, because  the  Senator  believed  that  pro- 
hibition would  not  work.  It  gave  the  State 
a  monopoly  of  the  liquor  traffic,  abolishing 
all  liquor  shops  and  substituting  for  them  dis- 
pensaries where  the  liquor  could  be  purchased 
in  bottles  for  consumption  off  the  premises. 
A  State  Board  of  Control,  with  five  mem-' 
bers  elected  by  the  Legislature,  supervised  the 
trade. 

Johnson  made  no  secret  of  his  belief  that 
Senator  Tillman  was  honest  and  sincere  in 
his  attempt  and  that  he  did  his  best  to  give 
it  a  fair  trial.  "  For  ten  years,"  wrote  John- 
son, "he  was  the  dominating  interest  in  its 
management.  He  fought  for  it  fiercely,  in 
season  and  out  of  season.  No  system  of 
liquor-selling  was  ever  tried  out  under  more 
favorable  circumstances  and  with  more  pow- 
erful support.  The  plan  had  every  advantage 
conceivable  for  its  success.  Yet  Senator  Till- 
man, having  tested  his  own  project  in  the 
furnace  of  experience  covering  nearly  two  de- 
cades, was  so  convinced  of  its  unworkable 


52          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

character  that  he  turned  upon  it  and  helped 
to  put  an  end  to  the  project  which  he  had 
himself  established.  Thanks  to  Senator  Till- 
man,  no  man  can  no^  say  that  the  State 
monopoly  plan  has  never  been  tried  out  under 
favorable  circumstances." 

In  May,  1899,  Johnson  visited  South  Car- 
olina to  study  the  working  of  the  dispensary 
law  on  the  spot.  He  returned  again  later. 
He  adopted  his  usual  methods  of  collecting  all 
the  facts.  He  examined  the  reports  of  the 
dispensary  and  the  liquor  legislation  of  the 
State,  and  examined  the  books  of  the  Collec- 
tor of  Internal  Revenue.  He  visited  the  liquor 
dispensaries,  interviewed  innumerable  people 
and  further  visited  and  examined  more  than 
two  hundred  and  fifty  "  Blind  Tigers,"  places 
where  intoxicating  liquors  were  illegally  on 
sale.  He  made  maps  of  some  of  these  locali- 
ties showing  where  the  "  Blind  Tigers  "  were, 
and  then  he  issued  his  report. 

It  showed  that  there  had  been  a  large  in- 
crease in  the  consumption  of  drink  under  the 
dispensary  system,  that  it  had  no  monopoly 
of  the  traffic  except  in  name ;  that  illicit  trade 


BACK  TO  NEW  YORK  53 

was  very  largely  carried  on,  that  the  illicit 
sellers  were  practically  immune  from  prosecu- 
tion for  political  reason,  and  that  it  had  had 
a  disastrous  effect  upon  the  morals  and  so- 
briety of  the  people. 

His,investigations  received  a  very  remark- 
able testimonial  to  their  accuracy.  There  came 
a  dispute  between  the  State  of  South  Caro- 
lina and  the  Federal  Government  over  the 
question  of  the  payment  of  certain  liquor 
taxes.  The  State  urged  that  the  dispensary 
system  was  an  exercise  by  the  State  of  police 
powers,  and  therefore  could  not  be  taxed  under 
the  Internal  Revenue  Laws.  The  Federal 
Government  argued  on  the  other  side  that 
the  dispensary  was  purely  a  business  enter- 
prise, operated  for  profit,  and  that  it  ought 
to  pay.  The  Federal  Government  had,  how- 
ever, no  evidence  to  back  its  contention.  It 
called  upon  Johnson.  He  produced  the  re- 
sults of  his  inquiries  before  the  Court  and  on 
his  evidence  the  Federal  Government  won  its 
suit.  His  inquiries  had  a  still  wider  result. 
The  prohibitionists  who  had  been  temporarily 
defeated  reopened  their  battle  with  renewed 


54          "  PUSSYFOOT  "  JOHNSON 

strength  and  eventually  the  dispensary  system 
was  abolished  and  prohibition  re-enacted  in 
South  Carolina  by  a  popular  vote  of  nearly 
three  to  one. 

When  the  New  Voice  shifted  to  Chicago, 
Johnson  could  not  accompany  it,  owing  to  his 
asthma.  He  still  retained  the  post  of  staff 
correspondent  and  visited  England  to  study 
municipal  enterprises.  From  there  he  went 
to  Sweden  to  study  the  Gothenburg  system, 
and  his  series  of  articles  analyzing  and  con- 
demning it  was  afterwards  published  as  a 
pamphlet,  and  led  to  considerable  controversy, 
particularly  with  the  English  authorities, 
Messrs.  Joseph  Rowntree  and  Arthur  Sher- 
well. 

The  Gothenburg  system  had  been  adopted 
by  the  Municipal  Council  of  that  city  to  check 
the  fearful  ravages  caused  by  the  drink  traf- 
fic there.  The  main  part  of  the  trade  in 
spirits,  but  not  in  beer,  was  managed  by  a 
company,  not  for  private  gain,  but  in  order 
to  remove  as  far  as  possible  the  evils  of  the 
trade.  The  sale  of  food  was  encouraged. 
Neither  shareholders  nor  managers  were  pe- 


BACK  TO  NEW  YORK  55 

cuniarily  interested  in  pushing  the  sales  and 
the  company  received  no  profits  except  a  fixed 
percentage  on  its  paid-up  capital. 

Johnson,  as  a  result  of  his  investigations, 
declared  that  the  system  had  generally  been 
conducted  in  Gothenburg  with  remarkable 
purity  of  purpose.  It  had  always  been  managed 
by  men  of  the  highest  standing  and  scandals 
such  as  had  attended  the  South  Carolina  Dis- 
pensary had  been  conspicuously  absent.  The 
drink  shops  were  clean,  attractive,  light  and 
well  conducted:  the  food  offered  in  them  was 
clean  and  wholesome.  Nevertheless,  he 
summed  up  the  result  of  the  system  in  some 
deadly  findings: 

1.  There  are  no  reliable  statistics  of  the  con- 
sumption of  spirits  in  Gothenburg.    The  statistics 
hitherto  published  on  this  point  have  been  mis- 
leading to  the  point  of  fraud. 

2.  Since  the  bolag  (liquor  company)  was  es- 
tablished, the  number  of  paupers  for  each  1,000 
population  has  increased  fifty  per  cent,  and  the 
cost  of  maintaining  them,  per  inhabitant,  had 
nearly  doubled. 

3.  The  number  of  convictions  for  drunkenness 
per  1,000  population  has  nearly  doubled. 

4.  The  cases  of  delirium  tremens  per  1,000 


56          "  PUSSYFOOT  "  JOHNSON 

population  has  more  than  trebled  in  the  past: 
eleven  years. 

5.  During  the  year  1898,  Gothenburg  had  one 
thousand  six  hundred  more  arrests  for  drunken- 
ness than  the  most  drunken  American  city  of 
similar  population. 

6.  The  number  of  liquor  shops  in  Gothenburg 
is  a  Chinese  puzzle. 

Johnson  was  now  brought  into  very  close 
intercourse  with  John  G.  Woolley,  the  tem- 
perance orator  and  Prohibition  candidate  for 
the  Presidency  in  1902.  They  combined  in, 
among  other  things,  the  production  of  a  sub- 
stantial book  of  over  five  hundred  pages, 
"  Temperance  Progress  in  the  Century."  To 
say  that  they  combined  to  write  this  book  is, 
perhaps,  a  figure  of  speech,  for  practically  the 
whole  burden  of  it  fell  on  the  shoulders  of 
Johnson.  Woolley  had  entered  into  a  contract 
to  write  a  book  of  147,000  words,  and  to  de- 
liver the  manuscript  by  a  given  time.  A  his- 
tory of  the  Temperance  Movement  could  not 
be  undertaken  without  considerable  research, 
and  Mr.  Woolley's  brilliant  talents  did  not 
incline  him  to  heavy  labor  on  detail.  Accord- 
ingly he  engaged  a  preacher  to  read  up  the 


BACK  TO  NEW  YORK  57 

matter,  and  make  notes  for  him.  The  preacher 
duly  made  his  appearance  with  an  enormous 
stack  of  notes  of  all  kinds.  Woolley  had  no 
time  even  to  read  them,  so  he  appealed  to 
Johnson  to  join  him  in  the  enterprise,  and  to 
divide  the  promised  royalties  between  them. 
Johnson  agreed.  He  examined  the  notes  and 
found  that  they  were  worth  nothing  to  him, 
so  he  emptied  them  into  his  waste  paper  bas- 
ket, and  started  to  the  book  de  novo.  It  was 
completed  in  due  course,  but  the  troubles  were 
not  over  yet. 

Mr.  Woolley  left  his  son  to  read  the  proofs 
for  him.  The  son  proceeded  to  cut  out  some 
40,000  words.  This  made  the  book  too  short 
and  led  to  trouble  with  the  publishers,  and 
a  charge  for  the  matter  held  back.  Then  the 
publishing  firm  became  bankrupt,  and  the 
promised  royalties  were  for  a  long  time  in- 
visible. One  day  John  G.  Woolley  received 
a  letter  saying  that  the  accounts  for  the  book 
had  been  balanced,  and  seventy-five  cents  were 
coming  to  him. 

Woolley  wrote  to  Johnson  that  he  did  not 
know  what  to  do  with  so  much  money,  so  he 


58          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

sent  him  seventy- five  cents  to  see  if  he  had  any 
use  for  them. 

By  this  time  Johnson  was  in  the  Indian 
Service.  He  had  recently  made  a  series  of 
raids  on  gambling  establishments,  and  had  been 
breaking  up  a  number  of  captured  poker  chips 
until  he  was  tired.  He  had  quite  a  big  pile 
of  them.  He  put  them  in  a  box,  spent  the 
seventy-five  cents  on  expresss  charges  and  sent 
them  to  John  G.  Woolley. 

While  Johnson  was  in  London  he  received 
a  cablegram  asking  him  to  go  to  the  Philip- 
pines to  investigate  the  drink  question  in  the 
Archipelago.  He  set  off  at  once  for  Hong- 
Kong,  cabling  back  to  his  people  to  send  him 
some  money.  When  he  reached  Hong-Kong 
there  was  a  letter  waiting  for  him  care  of  the 
Hong-Kong  &  Shanghai  Bank,  saying  that  the 
money  was  being  sent  in  another  envelope. 
The  envelope  had  not  arrived.  Johnson  went 
on,  however,  to  Manila,  expecting  that  his 
remittance  would  follow  by  the  next  mail. 
Unfortunately  for  him,  the  remittance  had 
been  posted  on  the  famous  Peace  ship  which 


BACK  TO  NEW  YORK  59 

was  taking  Mr.  Taft  on  his  commission  of 
conciliation  to  the  Philippines.  When  the 
Peace  ship  reached  Hong-Kong  Mr.  Taft  and 
his  party  learned  that  there  was  a  plan  to 
burn  Manila  when  they  arrived,  in  order  to 
show  the  feelings  of  the  populace  towards 
them.  As  they  did  not  want  this  kind  of 
welcome  they  sailed  to  Nagasaki,  and  killed 
two  weeks'  time  to  give  the  popular  excite- 
ment time  to  calm  down.  The  mail  remained 
on  the  ship,  and  people  in  the  Philippines 
had  to  wait  for  their  letters. 

Johnson  had  no  money  to  waste.  His  funds 
were  soon  exhausted.  He  pawned  his  watch 
for  $12  and  received,  in  addition  to  the  money, 
a  ticket  big  enough  for  the  deed  for  a  town 
lot. 

His  $12  did  not  last  long.  One  day,  as  he 
was  getting  to  the  end  of  it,  he  met  an  old 
Omaha  newspaper  man,  Al  Ewan,  on  the  street. 

"  Al,  what  are  you  doing  here  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  I  am  managing  editor  of  the  Manila  Free- 
dom/' came  the  reply. 

"  How  much  do  you  get?  " 
>   "  Sixty  dollars  a  week." 


60          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

"  Well,  I  am  busted,  so  you  had  better  di- 
vide your  salary  with  me  until  I  get  some 
money." 

Ewan  split  his  salary  until  the  Peace  ship 
arrived,  and  Johnson's  financial  troubles  were 
over. 

Shortly  after  that  Ewan  left  the  paper,  and 
Johnson  temporarily  took  his  place,  becom- 
ing managing  editor  of  the  Freedom  for  five 
or  six  weeks.  This  gave  him  every  oppor- 
tunity to  get  all  the  details  he  wanted  of  the 
drink  question  in  the  islands. 

He  discovered  that  an  army  surgeon,  Dr. 
Ira  A.  Brown,  had  been  investigating  the  qual- 
ity of  the  whisky  sold  in  Manila  and  had  se- 
verely condemned  the  kind  generally  supplied 
to  the  troops.  His  report  was  suppressed  and 
Brown  was  ordered  back  to  America.  He 
actually  went  on  board  ship,  but  there  was  a 
typhoon  outside  the  harbor  and  the  ship  lay 
there  for  four  days.  Johnson  learned  some- 
thing of  the  report  and  wrote  an  editorial 
article  demanding  that  Brown  be  recalled  and 
his  report  was  made  public. 

The  military  authorities  who  governed  the 


BACK  TO  NEW  YORK  61 

Philippines  could  not  do  anything  against  the 
Freedom  for  this,  but  they  watched  their  op- 
portunity. Shortly  afterwards  the  Freedom 
prepared  a  story  about  a  fight  between  a 
Frenchman  and  the  Belgian  Consul.  It  was 
all  ready  when  the  military  censor  came  along 
and  would  not  allow  it  to  be  printed,  dedar- 
ing  that  it  might  make  war  between  the  United 
States  and  Belgium. 

Next  day  an  officer  came  round  and  called 
Johnson  aside.  "  We  were  not  afraid  of  war 
between  the  United  States  and  Belgium,  and 
the  suppression  of  your  paper  had  nothing  to 
do  with  it.  You  keep  your  face  shut  about 
the  whisky  and  it  will  be  all  right.  That  was 
just  a  reminder  that  you  had  no  business  to 
print  that  editorial  about  Brown." 

Johnson  returned  from  the  Philippines  in 
due  course,  and  plunged  into,  the  Presidency 
campaign  when  Woolley  was  candidate.  He 
wrote  one  pamphlet  that  ran  into  a  circulation 
of  hundreds  of  thousands.  It  was  entitled 
"  Benevolent  Assimilation  of  the  Philippines," 
and  consisted  of  a  list  of  two  hundred  out- 
rages committed  by  American  soldiers  when 


62          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

drunk.  The  point  of  it  was  that  the  Govern- 
ment ought  to  cut  off  the  supply  of  drink  for 
the  army. 

The  years  up  to  1906  were  full  up  with  hard 
detail  newspaper  and  organizing  work.  John- 
son now  made  his  home  in  Laurel,  Md.,  with- 
in easy  reach  of  Washington.  In  1904  he 
was  prohibition  candidate  for  Congress  for 
the  Fifth  District,  Maryland,  but  was  not 
elected. 

The  association  between  Johnson  and  Wool- 
ley  grew  more  and  more  intimate.  In  1902 
Woolley  secured  control  of  the  New  Voice 
and  Johnson  became  managing  editor.  The 
two  men  fought  many  great  battles  together, 
both  inside  and  outside  the  ranks  of  the  Pro- 
hibition Party.  In  1905  they  matured  a  plan 
for  a  great  Encyclopedia  of  Temperance  and 
Prohibition,  which  was  to  give  every  fact 
known  about  the  liquor  traffic  in  all  the  ages. 

In  that  same  year  Woolley  set  out  on  a 
4O,ooo-mile  temperance  campaign  overseas, 
leaving  Johnson  as  managing  editor  of  the 
New  Voice.  Johnson  was  now  consistently  ad- 
vocating co-operation  with  other  temperance 


BACK  TO  NEW  YORK  63 

agencies,  including  the  Anti-Saloon  League, 
in  temperance  work  against  the  narrower  sec- 
tion of  the  Prohibition  Party.  While  Wool- 
ley  was  far  away  an  event  arose  which  ter- 
minated Johnson's  connection  with  the  paper. 
The  directors  of  the  New  Voice  sold,  at  regu- 
lar advertisement  rates,  nearly  a  page  of  pure 
reading  matter  to  the  head  of  a  organization 
opposed  to  trades  unionism.  The  article  was 
a  severe  attack  on  the  Labor  Union  movement 
and  appeared  without  any  remarks  to  show 
that  it  was  advertising  matter. 

Johnson  thereupon  wrote  the  following  edi- 
torial denouncing  the  publication  of  advertis- 
ing matter  as  news: 

"  When  organized  corruption  and  greed  wish 
to  fight  against  the  development  of  reform  move- 
ments the  crooks  begin  at  once  to  hunt  out  the 
crooked  newspapers  and  there  poison  the  springs 
of  information. 

"Just  so  when  organized  crookedness  and 
greed  seeks  to  crush  out  the  life  of  labor  or- 
ganization battling  for  their  own  uplift,  the  crook 
comes  sauntering  into  the  business  office  of  a 
crooked  newspaper  jingling  gold  in  his  breeches 
and  asks  '  How-much-a-line-for-news-space-to- 
fight-Labor-with  ? ' 


64          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

"  The  business  office  of  the  modern  newspaper 
is  the  bedhouse  where  the  two  classes  of  crooks 
meet  for  these  assignations. 

"  There  the  boodler  and  the  boodle  meet  on 
common  ground,  with  the  curtains  drawn  and 
cotton  in  the  keyhole;  there  the  gold  is  counted 
and  the  plots  made  to  pollute  the  streams  of 
information  which  feed  the  intellectual  republic." 

Not  unnaturally  the  directors  of  the  New 
Voice  had  the  editorial  suppressed  and  ordered 
Johnson  to  quit  writing  editorials  of  that  kind. 
The  editor  retorted  by  resigning  his  post. 

The  door  was  soon  to  open  to  him  in  a 
much  wider  field,  but  while  waiting  he  en- 
gaged himself  in  a  new  campaign — to  remove 
the  tax  on  denatured  alcohol  in  order  that  it 
might  be  used  for  commercial  purposes.  This 
measure  was  successfully  carried  through  Con- 
gress. 


IV 

LIFE  IN  THE  "  BAD  LANDS  " 

IN  THE  summer  of  1906  the  United 
States  Government  was  seriously  con- 
cerned over  the  general  lawlessness  ex- 
isting in  the  Indian  Territories  and  Oklahoma. 
These  regions  had  for  forty  years  been  a  land 
of  refuge  for  criminals  from  every  part  of 
the  Union.  The  murderer  in  the  East  nat- 
urally fled  to  Oklahoma  if  he  could,  knowing 
that  there  he  would  be  comparatively  safe. 
The  bad  whites  intermarried  with  Indians  and 
negroes  and  a  half-breed  population  grew  up 
that  knew  little  law  but  the  law  of  the  gun. 
The  few  marshals  did  their  best  to  keep  order 
and  were  engaged  in  perpetual  war  with  the 
heavily  armed  desperados  who  defied  them. 
This  was  the  real  Wild  West,  where  murder 
was  counted  as  a  comparatively  small  offense, 
65 


66          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

but  where  a  man  would  be  lynched  for  steal- 
ing a  horse. 

The  Territories  were  supposed  to  be  under 
Prohibition,  but  this  was  openly  defied. 
Whisky-peddling  was  carried  on  to  a  very- 
great  extent  Large  quantities  of  spirits  were 
brought  in  by  express  almost  without  hin- 
drance. Brewers  outside  the  Territories  were 
openly  shipping  in  low-grade  beers  under  var- 
ious names:  "Uno,"  "Ino,"  "Long  Horn," 
"Mistletoe,"  "Non-Tax,"  "Short  Horn," 
"Pablo,"  "Tin-Top,"  and  the  like.  These 
beers  had  a  way  of  growing  stronger  as  time 
went  on,  until  even  the  expert  could  not  dis- 
tinguish them  from  the  most  potent  brews. 

There  were  hundreds  of  saloons,  ostensibly 
for  the  sale  of  temperance  beer,  but  in  nearly 
every  case  also  carrying  on  a  heavy  traffic  in 
whisky.  Many  of  these  saloons  had  gambling 
houses  and  resorts  of  vice  run  in  association 
with  them.  The  beer  joints  were  scattered  all 
over  the  Territories. 

Congress  appropriated  $25,000  towards  a 
special  effort  to  enforce  Prohibition.  The  au- 
thorities looked  about  for  a  really  good  man 


67 

and  their  choice  fell  on  William  E.  Johnson. 
He  was  elected,  as  the  Commissioner  for  In- 
dian Affairs  officially  reported,  "because  he  had 
already  proved  not  only  his  capacity  for  the 
sort  of  work  to  be  demanded  of  him,  but  his 
absolute  contempt  of  danger  in  the  perform- 
ance of  a  difficult  task."  He  was  given  the 
title  of  "  Special  Officer  for  the  Suppression 
of  the  Liquor  Traffic  in  Indian  Territory," 
with  a  salary  of  $2,500  a  year  and  ex- 
penses, and  the  right  to  engage  his  own  as- 
sistants. 

Johnson  was  fortunate  in  that  he  had  at 
the  beginning  the  whole-hearted  support  of  his 
departmental  chiefs.  He  was  made  his  own 
disbursing  officer  so  that  he  should  not  be 
hampered  or  delayed  over  questions  of  pay- 
ment Theodore  Roosevelt  was  President  and 
he  knew  something  of  Johnson  as  a  man 
who  "  got  things  done/*  Mr.  Garfield,  Sec- 
retary of  the  Interior,  backed  him  to  the  full 
and  his  direct  chief,  Mr.  Francis  E.  Leupp, 
gave  him  whole-hearted  sympathy  and  support. 

When  politicians  tried  to  interfere  with  John- 
son's activities,  the  President  pulled  them  up 


«58          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

quickly.  "  Leave  Johnson  alone,"  was  his  di- 
rection, written  on  the  top  of  a  letter  of  a 
prominent  politician  who  was  trying  to  check 
his  work. 

Like  Roosevelt,  Mr.  Garfield  believed  in  the 
policy  of  "  Thorough."  On  one  occasion, 
when,  Johnson  was  visiting  Washington,  he 
called  on  Garfield  to  pay  his  respects.  He  had 
just  come  out  of  three  or  four  fights  and  had 
a  black  eye,  while  one  fist  was  knocked  out 
and  bandaged.  "  Mr.  Secretary,"  he  said, 
"  have  you  any  kicks  about  what  I  have  been 
doing?  Have  you  any  instructions  as  to  my 
conduct  in  the  future?" 

Garfield  glanced  shrewdly  at  him.     "Yes," 

he  said,  "  you  go  right  back  to  your  Indian 

Territory.    Get  as  many  folks  there  in  jail  as 

you  can  and  keep  them  there  as  long  as  you 

<can.    When  they  come  out,  put  them  back  in 


Johnson  had  scarcely  arrived  in  Oklahoma 
;  be  fore,  by  one  bold  move,  he  created  alarm 
in  the  ranks  of  the  whisky  traders.  He  went 
quietly  to  Tulsa,  a  town  of  about  5,000  in- 
habitants, notorious  even  in  Oklahoma  for  the 


LIFE  IN  THE  «  BAD  LANDS  "        69 

amount  of  whisky  consumed  there.  No  one 
knew  him.  He  thoroughly  investigated,  lo- 
cated strategic  points,  mapped  out  the  town 
and  then  went  away  and  had  a  conference 
with  a  famous  Government  marshal,  L.  M. 
Bennett,  of  Muskogee.  A  dozen  deputy  sher- 
iffs were  summoned  and  the  party,  heavily 
armed,  swooped  down  on  the  place.  The  great- 
est pains  had  been  taken  to  keep  the  move 
secret  and  even  the  deputies  were  not  told 
their  destination  until  the  last  minute.  They 
captured  eight  men  and  secured  eight  barrels 
of  whisky,  which  were  promptly  emptied  out 
on  to  the  ground.  The  city  dog  catcher,  who 
was  also  a  special  policeman,  was  caught  with 
a  barrel  of  whisky.  One  of  the  principal  real 
estate  dealers  was  taken,  Johnson  personally- 
raiding  his  office  and  finding  a  number  of 
empty  bottles  and  one  full  one  in  his  desk. 
Of  the  eight  persons,  two  were  held  as  wit- 
nesses, two  gave  bonds  for  $1,000  each,  and 
the  remaining  four  were  taken  back  to  Musko- 
gee and  put  in  jail. 

"  Booze   busting  has   been   due    for   some 
time,"   said   the  local   paper,   the   Democrat, 


70          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

commenting  on  the  event.  It  had  come  in 
earnest ! 

During  the  next  three  or  four  weeks  similar 
raids  followed  one  another  so  fast  that  the 
trade  was  thrown  into  a  panic.  Johnson  and 
his  men  swooped  down  on  Eufaula  and  made 
a  big  catch  there.  They  spilled  two  thousand 
gallons  of  whisky  and  put  a  famous  "  boot- 
legger" out  of  business  at  South  McAlester. 
They  invaded  the  railway  stations  and  con- 
fiscated express  packages.  They  investigated 
drug  stores  and  found  some  amazing  traffic 
going  on  in  them. 

Two  events  which  happened  within  a  few 
weeks  of  his  arrival  made  Johnson's  fame  se- 
cure throughout  the  whole  Territory.  The  first 
was  at  Eufaula.  A  hotel  keeper  and  drug- 
gist there  by  name  of  Alec  Sellers  was  well 
.  known  to  be  illicitly  selling  liquor.  Attempt 
after  attempt  had  been  made  to  catch  him,  but 
in  vain.  In  the  back  room  of  his  store  Sellers 
had  a  monster  safe,  in  which  he  kept  all  his 
drinks.  The  hotel  was  raided  by  the  Deputy 
Marshal,  Johnson  taking  part.  Sellers  man- 
aged, however,  before  the  men  broke  through, 


LIFE  IN  THE  "  BAD  LANDS  "       71 

to  get  his  drinks  in  the  safe,  and  to  lock  it. 
When  the  deputies  demanded  that  the  safe 
should  be  opened,  Sellers  flatly  refused.  One  of 
the  Marshal's  men  sought  out  Johnson  and 
asked  what  they  should  do.  He  told  them  to 
hurry  back  and  see  that  nobody  tampered  with 
the  safe,  then  he  returned  and  walking  up  to 
Sellers  said,  "  Alec,  open  that  safe."  The 
druggist  laughed  at  him.  Johnson  pulled  out 
his  watch. 

"  I  give  you  fifteen  minutes  to  open  that 
safe,"  he  said. 

Then  he  went  down,  found  a  i6-lb.  sledge- 
hammer with  a  long  handle,  and  returned  with 
it.  There  was  still  three  minutes  of  the  fifteen 
to  spare.  Sellers  had  a  lawyer  by  his  side  and 
there  was  a  crowd  of  several  hundred  men 
present,  all  with  guns,  and  ready  to  shoot  down 
the  Government  officials  at  the  drop  of  a  hand- 
kerchief. Johnson  had  five  or  six  deputies 
with  him,  all  armed,  and  he  knew  that  his  men, 
trained  to  work  together,  were  good  for,  at  any 
rate,  twenty-five  to  thirty  of  that  crowd. 

He  again  looked  at  his  watch. 

"  Three  minutes  yet,"  he  remarked. 


72          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

The  three  minutes  passed  in  silence.  He 
turned  to  the  druggist. 

"  Alec,  time  to  open  the  safe." 

The  reply  came  from  the  lawyer,  who 
stepped  forward  and  gave  Johnson  formal 
notice  that  the  safe  must  not  be  touched. 

Johnson  had  expected  to  bluff  the  druggist 
into  doing  as  he  bade  him.  His  bluff  had  been 
called. 

"  All  right,"  said  he.  "  I  will  have  to  open 
it  myself." 

He  had  not  the  slightest  idea  how  to  force 
a  safe  open,  but  he  thought  that  he  could  at 
any  rate  fix  the  lock  so  that  nobody  else  could 
open  it  until  he  had  had  sufficient  time  to  think 
out  a  fresh  plan  of  campaign.  He  took  off  his 
coat,  climbed  on  the  safe,  raised  the  sledge- 
hammer as  high  as  he  could,  and  brought  it 
three  times  down  with  all  his  strength  on  the 
nose  of  the  combination,  hoping  to  jam  it. 
At  the  end  of  the  third  blow  he  turned  a 
handle.  To  his  surprise  the  door  came  easily 
open.  He  had  struck  it  with  such  force  that 
the  flanges  had  flown  out.  Sellers  readily  con- 
sented to  open  the  inside  door,  to  save  it  being 


LIFE  IN  THE  "  BAD  LANDS  "       73 

forced  open  too,  and  there  eighty-one  bottles 
of  whisky  were  found. 

"  I  was  the  most  astonished  man  there,  when 
the  safe  door  opened,"  Johnson  afterwards  ad- 
mitted. "  It  was  spread  all  over  the  country 
that  I  was  a  safe  expert,  and  that  there  was  no 
use  locking  a  safe,  for  I  could  break  into  it. 
I  never  had  to  ask  a  man  a  second  time  to 
open  his  safe  after  that.  I  never  told 
anybody,  however,  that  my  action  was  pure 
bluff." 

Sellers  was  hailed  before  a  Federal  Judge 
and  held  in  a  $2,000  bond.  A  gaming  house- 
keeper, arrested  at  the  same  time,  felt  that  he 
had  not  had  a  run  for  his  money.  He  had 
built  the  gaming  tables  the  day  before  and  had 
not  yet  started  business  when  his  parapher- 
nalia was  seized  and  burned.  The  whisky  cap- 
tured was  spilt  in  the  streets  and  negroes  tried 
to  scoop  it  up  with  their  hands  as  it  was  run- 
ning away. 

The  second  incident,  which  happened  two  or 
three  weeks  after  the  safe  episode,  was  cer- 
tainly no  bluff,  for  it  involved  a  cool,  open- 
eyed  march  into  about  as  ugly  a  position  aa 


74          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

anyone  could  desire.  A  man  called  John 
Harris  lived  with  his  two  sons-in-law,  James 
McKeehan  and  Jack  Trumbly.  They  were  all 
thieves  and  made  their  home  in  a  camp  and  a 
river  boat  in  the  heart  of  the  Canadian  River 
bottom  thickets,  spending  their  time  fishing, 
stealing  and  selling  illicit  whisky. 

McKeehan  was  married  to  Harris's  sixteen- 
year-old  stepdaughter,  Nora.  He  was  a 
thrifty  man  and  had  money  in  hand  when  the 
others  had  none.  They  would  often  have  to 
go  to  him  to  borrow  a  dollar  when  they  wanted 
it  and  he  would  take  their  watches  or  other 
effects  as  personal  security  and  exact  a  high 
rate  of  interest.  Harris  fell  in  love  with  his 
own  stepdaughter  and  she  evidently  fell  in  love 
with  him,  so  there  was  a  double  reason  for 
wanting  to  get  rid  of  McKeehan. 

Harris  and  the  others  determined  to  murder 
McKeehan.  They  suggested  to  McKeehan  that 
they  should  go  out  and  steal  some  sorghum 
cane  at  Paw  Paw.  On  the  way  to  the  press, 
Harris  hit  McKeehan  over  the  head  with  an 
iron  bar,  smashing  his  skull  in.  Then  Harris 
and  Trumbly  crammed  the  body  into  a  bag, 


LIFE  IN  THE  «  BAD  LANDS  "        75 

tied  the  bar  of  iron  to  it  and  sank  the  bag  in 
the  river. 

About  a  month  after  this  a  settler  went  out 
fishing.  It  was  low  tide,  and  suddenly  the 
head  of  a  corpse  emerged  from  the  water,  the 
feet  still  being  held  down  by  the  bar  of  iron. 
The  sack  had  come  away  from  the  head,  and  it 
seemed  to  the  man  as  he  moved  hastily  away 
that  the  face  of  the  corpse  gibbered  at  him. 
He  hurried  back  to  Paw  Paw  and  raised  a  hue 
and  cry. 

At  first  no  clew  to  the  criminals  could  be 
discovered.  A  little  later  the  police  of  Fort 
Smith  raided  Harris'  houseboat  which  had 
floated  down  the  river  to  that  city,  not  in  con- 
nection with  the  murder,  but  when  searching 
for  some  stolen  goods.  In  their  search  they 
found  some  clothes  stained  with  blood,  and 
thinking  that  here  was  a  clew,  they  arrested 
Trumbly  and  his  wife  and  put  them  in  jail. 
Nora,  McKeehan's  wife,  and  John  Harris  had 
disappeared.  The  blood-stained  clothes  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  murder,  but  the  police, 
believing  in  their  clew,  cross-examined  Trum- 
bly and  his  wife  so  relentlessly  day  after  day 


76          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

that  in  the  end  they  bluffed  and  bullied  the 
wife  into  a  confession. 

Harris,  the  main  criminal,  and  Nora 
McKeehan  could  not,  however,  be  found. 
Johnson  arrived  at  Fort  Smith  just  about  this 
time,  and  the  police  appealed  to  him  for  aid. 
He  asked  a  number  of  questions  about  what 
they  had  found  in  the  houseboat.  They  men- 
tioned that,  among  other  things,  there  was  a 
handbag  containing  some  letters.  "  Had  they 
examined  it?  "  he  asked.  "  Only  casually,"  he 
was  told. 

Johnson  took  the  bag  and  went  over  all  its 
contents.  In  it  was  an  unsigned  letter  "  Send 
my  fishing  tackle  to  Eufaula."  That  was  all. 
Johnson  suspected  that  this  letter  might  be 
from  one  of  the  missing  parties,  and  knowing 
where  they  would  most  likely  go  for  fishing, 
he  immediately  took  train  to  Eufaula.  There 
he  went  to  the  express  office  and  asked  if  a 
package  had  come  from  Fort  Smith  for  John 
Harris.  There  had,  about  a  week  before,  but 
the  express  people  could  give  no  description  of 
what  the  man  was  like,  nor  did  they  know 
where  he  was.  Johnson  had,  however,  also 


LIFE  IN  THE  "  BAD  LANDS  "•       77 

found  in  the  bag  a  group  photograph  with 
Harris  in  it.  He  had  the  photo  enlarged. 
Employing  his  common  sense  he  concluded 
that  if  they  were  going  fishing  the  most  prob- 
able place  would  be  where  the  Canadian  River 
and  the  Verdigris  River  met,  about  eight  miles 
from  there.  He  made  for  this  spot. 

Acting  on  the  old  belief  that  a  ferryman 
knows  all  about  everybody  in  the  district,  he 
made  for  the  ferry.  The  ferryman  was  half 
drunk.  He  had  just  piloted  somebody  across 
the  river,  and  taken  as  his  pay  a  bottle  of 
whisky.  Johnson  showed  him  the  photo,  and 
asked  if  he  knew  that  man.  The  ferryman 
recognized  him  at  once.  He  and  the  woman 
were  in  a  camp  with  a  number  of  outlaws  some 
distance  away.  Johnson,  keeping  silence  about 
the  murder,  declared  that  they  had  been  steal- 
ing, and  he  had  got  to  have  them. 

"You  can't  go  near  them,"  the  ferryman 
replied.  "  They  all  have  rifles  and  they  are 
crack  shots.  You  go,  and  you  will  be  a  dead 
man." 

Johnson,  however,  obtained  two  horses,  bor- 
rowed a  double-barrelled  shotgun  from  the 


78          "  PUSSYFOOT  "  JOHNSON 

ferryman,  and  impressed  him  into  his  service 
to  show  him  the  way  to  the  outlaws'  camp. 
After  a  time  they  saw  a  camp  fire  in  the  dis- 
tance. The  ferryman  now  revealed  consider- 
able signs  of  alarm.  He  wanted  to  get  out  of 
it.  Johnson  turned  sternly  to  him. 

"  This  is  a  murder  business,"  he  said. 
"  These  people  have  to  be  captured,  and  you 
have  to  help  me  to  take  them." 

He  ordered  him  to  stand  by  with  the  horses 
until  he  heard  a  whistle,  a  signal.  Then  he 
was  to  come  quickly,  and  if  there  was  any 
shooting  he  was  to  take  part  in  it,  and  was  to 
shoot  to  kill. 

Johnson  saw,  before  he  reached  the  camp, 
that  there  were  seven  men  there,  and  the 
rifles  were  leaning  up  against  a  tree.  He 
'pulled  his  vest  down  to  hide  his  revolvers  and 
walked  into  the  camp  playing  the  part  of  the 
casual  tourist. 

"  Have  you  any  fish  to  sell  ?  "  he  asked.  "  I 
have  been  out  fishing  all  day,  and  have  got 
nothing.  I  don't  want  to  go  home  empty- 
handed.  Everyone  will  have  the  "ha!  ha!" 
on  me.  If  you  have  any  fish  I  will  buy  them." 


LIFE  IN  THE  «  BAD  LANDS  "       79 

The  men  agreed. 

All  this  time  Johnson  was  quietly  edging 
himself  around  so  as  to  reach  a  spot  where  he 
would  be  between  them  and  their  rifles.  Then 
he  whipped  out  a  couple  of  revolvers  and  or- 
dered them  to  put  up  their  hands.  They 
promptly  did  so,  when  he  bade  them  turn  round 
with  their  backs  to  him.  The  signal  whistle 
brought  the  ferryman.  Johnson  bade  him 
search  the  party  for  guns.  Two  of  them  had 
revolvers  which  were  taken  away,  and  all  the 
rifle  ammunition  was  appropriated.  Then,  put- 
ting Harris  and  Nora  on  a  horse  and  fasten- 
ing them  securely  there,  Johnson  started  to 
go,  the  ferryman  leading  the  one  horse,  and  he 
riding  behind.  Before  he  started  he  turned 
round  and  made  a  speech  to  the  outlaws. 

"  I  suppose  you  think  you  are  going  to  try 
to  rescue  these  two,"  he  said.  "Well,  you 
won't  do  it,  alive,  at  all  events.  At  the  first 
bad  sign  I  am  going  to  shoot  the  man.  Then 
I  will  shoot  the  woman.  I  will  shoot  to  kill. 
Then  I  will  kill  you  if  I  can,  if  you  don't 
kill  me  first." 

He  got  back  in  safety.    Harris  and  Trumbly 


80          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

were  convicted  and  sent  to  the  penitentiary  for 
life. 

The  story  of  the  capture  of  John  Harris 
and  Nora  made  Johnson's  reputation  secure. 
The  West  knew  that  a  real  man  had  arrived. 


HOW  "  PUSSYFOOT  "  WON  HIS  NAME 

PHOTOGRAPHS   of  Johnson  taken  in 
his  early  days  as  Special  Agent  show 
something  of  the  man.    He  was  in  the 
prime  of  life,  with  face  and  bearing  telling 
of  strength,  vigor  and  resolution.     He  wore 
a   soft   round    felt  hat,    broad-brimmed   and 
trimmed  in  cowboy  fashion.    He  usually  wore 
a  long  coat  which  served  to  conceal  the  feather- 
weight Savage  rifle  which  was  his  constant 
companion. 

He  gradually  gathered  around  him  a  staff 
of  deputies  who,  as  he  was  ever  ready  to  pro- 
claim, were  the  finest  men  to  be  found  any- 
where. There  was  Bud  Ledbetter  for  instance, 
a  strapping  six-footer,  with  a  keen  gray  eye, 
whose  fame  as  a  fighter  was  known  wherever 
Westerners  met.  Ledbetter  would  go  any- 
where and  face  any  crowd.  He  could  draw 
81 


82          "  PUSSYFOOT  "  JOHNSON 

and  shoot  like  lightning  and  was  reputed  to 
have  killed  at  least  eighteen  men.  He  always 
*  claimed  that  he  had  never  fired  a  shot  until 
the  other  man  had  tried  to  shoot  him  first. 
Ledbetter's  name  carried  such  awe  that  often 
enough  when  word  came  that  he  was  approach- 
ing, the  criminals  would  make  quick  tracks 
away.  There  were  Grant  Cowan,  Bass  Reeves, 
Sam  Roberts  and  the  like.  Some  of  them 
were  within  the  next  few  months  to  be  shot 
down  while  helping  Johnson  to  enforce  the 
law. 

He  made  use  of  the  Indian  police  and  the 
grim  nature  of  much  of  his  work  may  be 
judged  from  the  fact  that  eight  of  his  assist- 
ants were  killed  by  outlaws.  One  of  these 
assistants  bore  a  somewhat  striking  personal 
resemblance  to  him  and  was  mistaken  for  him 
when  he  was  shot  at  Johnson  handled  over 
six  thousand  criminal  cases  during  this  phase 
of  his  career,  most  of  them  mixed  up  with  the 
whisky  business.  Out  of  all  the  cases  which 
he  brought  to  trial,  he  secured  a  conviction  of 
over  ninety-seven  per  cent.  He  endeavored 
never  to  prosecute  unless  he  was  absolutely  cer- 


HOW  HE  WON  HIS  NAME         83 

tain.  "  I  would  not  present  a  case  unless  I 
was  entitled  to  a  conviction,"  he  says,  "  and 
when  I  put  in  a  case  I  expected  a  conviction. 
I  not  only  was  careful  to  have  a  perfect  case, 
but  I  was  also  careful  to  have  it  intelligently 
presented,  with  the  same  energy  and  the  same 
fulness  of  detail  that  you  would  employ  in  a 
murder  prosecution." 

Very  soon  his  activities  became  the  subject 
of  common  talk.  His  lightning  strikes  became 
famous.  Men  nicknamed  him  the  "  Booze 
Buster,"  and  cartoonists  loved  to  picture  him, 
revolver  in  hand,  accompanied  by  his  agents, 
fighting  the  demon  rum.  "  He  is  one  of  the 
cleverest  '  Booze  Specialists '  that  has  ever  in- 
vaded the  territory,"  declared  the  Oklahoman. 
"  The  presence  of  Mr.  Johnson  seems  to  have 
redoubled  the  efforts  of  the  Deputy  Marshals 
all  over  the  territory  and  there  has  developed 
a  sort  of  rivalry  to  see  who  can  locate  and 
destroy  the  most  liquor." 

He  had  great  trouble  from  the  delivery  of 
spirits  by  express  from  areas  outside  his  dis- 
tricts, so  he  went  to  the  heads  of  the  express 
companies  and  convinced  them  that  it  would  be 


84          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

genuinely  to  their  interests  to  observe  the  law 
against  carrying  drink  into  the  Indian  Terri- 
tory. At  Christmas  time  he  put  an  Indian 
agent  outside  every  railway  station  to  seize 
any  consignment  of  liquor  that  might  have 
got  through.  He  had  the  so-called  "  soft " 
drinks  analyzed,  proved  that  they  were  "  soft  " 
only  in  name  and  then  opened  a  campaign 
against  them.  The  drink  sellers  tried  threats. 
They  tried  entreaties.  They  tried  every  method 
known,  but  in  vain.  One  South  McAlester 
paper  dropped  into  poetry  as  Christmas  drew 
near : — 

"  To  Mr.  Johnson. 

"  Say,  Mr.  Johnson,  turn  me  loose, 
And  let  me  have  my  Christmas  juice. 
Don't  break  these  bottles;  let  them  be; 
There's  plenty  there  for  you  and  me. 
Just  shut  your  eyes,  don't  make  a  row ; 
Be  good  this  once,  right  here  and  now. 

"  Say,  Mr.  Johnson,  please  go  'way, 
And  come  around  some  other  day. 
Be  good  this  Christmas,  what's  the  use 
Of  spilling  all  our  good  red  juice? 


HOW  HE  WON  HIS  NAME         85 

Say,  Mr.  Johnson,  you're  too  fly; 
Come,  old  man,  just  wink  your  eye. 
Just  let  expressmen  turn  it  loose; 
It's  Xmas  now,  a  good  excuse. 

"  Say,  Mr.  Johnson,  what's  the  use, 
Of  spilling  all  the  good  bug  juice? 
You  won't  make  good,  there'll  come  a  time 
When  you  must  find  another  clime. 
Say,  Mr.  Johnson,  just  you  skiddoo, 
Let  23  be  good  for  you. 
You're  on  the  slate  when  we're  cut  loose ; 
We'll  then  get  plenty  of  red  juice." 

Never  within  the  memory  of  man  had  there 
been  such  a  dry  Christmas  in  Indian  Territory 
as  that  of  1906.  On  December  I4th,  Johnson 
invaded  the  Ardmore  express  office  and  de- 
stroyed 1,920  bottles  of  so-called  temperance 
drinks.  It  took  about  two  hours  to  break  all 
the  bottles.  At  McAlester  the  agents  for  one 
beer,  supposed  to  be  a  temperance  beer, 
brought  suits  aggregating  $157,000  against 
him  for  smashing  their  stock.  The  local 
papers  reported  that  $25,000  of  this  was  for 
mental  anguish.  Johnson  retorted  by  present- 
ing twenty-three  indictments  against  the  men 
who  filed  the  suits. 


86          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

A  day  or  two  after  the  destruction  at  Ard- 
more  he  paid  a  visit  to  the  Choctaw  Nation 
and  destroyed  twenty-three  consignments  of 
liquor.  Then  he  moved  across  the  line  to  serve 
notice  on  the  brewers  to  stop  shipping  into 
Indian  Territory.  While  there  he  met  the  in- 
stigator of  the  damage  suits  against  him. 
"  Well !  "  the  man  jocularly  said.  "  I  am  still 
selling  the  stuff  at  McAlester."  "Thanks," 
said  Johnson.  "  I  will  stop  on  my  way  up." 
He  did  so  and  broke  up  900  bottles  there.  At 
Welch  a  few  days  earlier  he  had  smashed  six 
consignments  of  "  red-eye  "  whisky. 

The  drink  sellers  tried  to  serve  legal  in- 
junctions restraining  him.  He  dodged  what 
injunctions  he  could  and  defied  others.  The 
men  who  issued  the  injunctions  usually  found 
that  they  were  soon  indicted  before  grand 
juries. 

It  was  shortly  after  this  that  his  famous 
sobriquet  first  came  into  use.  I  find  in  the 
Muskogee  Democrat  for  December,  1907,  two 
little  notes:  "The  Booze  Department  of  the 
United  States  Government  under  the  able  di- 
rection of  '  Demon-fighting '  Johnson  has 


HOW  HE  WON  HIS  NAME         87 

saved  many  a  man  from  swearing  off  this  New 
Year's  Day.  .  .  .  Special  Agent  Johnson,  he 
of  the  '  Panther '  tread,  has  resented  the  ac- 
tion of  the  peddlers  of  bogus  beer  and  had 
them  all  indicted  by  the  Grand  Jury.  It  is 
evidently  Use  majeste  to  sue  a  velvet-shod 
emissary  of  Uncle  Sam's  Booze  Department." 
The  owner  of  a  pool  hall  at  Haskell  sent  a 
public  notice  to  Johnson  that  if  ever  he  came 
to  Haskell  he  would  shoot  him  on  sight. 
Everybody  knew  that  Johnson  had  been  chal- 
lenged. He  could  not  afford  to  refuse  to 
notice  it,  for,  in  the  West,  in  those  days,  the 
man  who  showed  a  sign  of  weakness  or  cow- 
ardice was  done.  He  enquired  if  the  pool  hall 
keeper  had  ever  seen  him.  He  was  told  that 
he  had  not,  but  had  a  very  good  description  of 
him.  Thereupon  Johnson  altered  his  make-up, 
mounted  his  horse  and  went  to  Haskell.  He 
tied  up  his  horse  in  front  of  the  pool  house, 
and  walked  in,  pretending  to  be  drunk.  Slam- 
ming a  silver  dollar  on  the  counter  he  de- 
manded a  drink.  The  pool  hall  keeper  passed 
him  over  a  bottle  of  sarsaparilla.  Johnson 
slammed  the  bottle  down  in  sudden  passion. 


88          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

"What's  the  use  of  that  to  me,"  he  yelled. 
"  You  give  me  real  hell  fire !  " 

The  pool  hall  keeper  studied  him,  and  con- 
cluding that  he  was  a  genuine  customer,  opened 
a  trap  door,  took  out  a  bottle  of  spirits  and 
handed  it  over.  Johnson  poured  out  the  drink 
and  then  demanded  some  tobacco.  The  saloon 
keeper  had  a  .44  revolver  sticking  out  of  each 
hip  pocket  and  was  the  kind  of  man  who  would 
shoot  at  the  first  suspicion.  Johnson  wanted  to 
get  him  in  such  a  position  that  he  could  not 
readily  reach  his  gun.  The  man  turned  round 
to  take  his  tobacco  jar  down  out  of  a  cupboard. 
Instantly  Johnson  had  whipped  the  revolvers 
out  of  his  pockets  and  placed  their  cold  barrels 
on  the  ears  of  the  bravo.  He  had  his  man 
disarmed  and  led  out  a  prisoner  in  no  time. 
The  West  then  named  him  "  Pussyfoot." 

Johnson's  activities  naturally  made  him 
many  enemies.  On  one  occasion  a  reward  of 
$3,000  was  offered  for  the  man  who  would  kill 
him  and  the  reward  was  nearly  won.  The 
story  is  worth  telling. 

There  were  two  notorious  law  breakers,  the 
Tittsworth  brothers,  Eugene  and  Ben,  who 


HOW  HE  WON  HIS  NAME        89 

lived  in  part  of  the  Indian  Territory  wilder- 
ness, famous  in  Western  annals  for  cold- 
blooded murders.  Johnson,  hearing  of  their 
doings,  made  a  raid  on  one  of  the  Tittsworth 
brothers'  joints,  accompanied  only  by  one  as- 
sistant, Deputy  Marshal  Sapper.  It  was  near 
midnight  when  he  got  to  the  place.  He  then 
knocked  at  Tittsworth's  door  and  a  man  came 
to  answer.  "  Is  this  Mr.  Tittsworth's  house  ?  " 
asked  Johnson.  "Yes,"  said  the  man,  "and 
I  am  Tittsworth." 

"  My  name  is  Johnson,  and  I  came  down 
here  to  get  you,"  said  the  Chief  Officer. 

"  I  guess  not,"  came  the  curt  reply. 

Johnson  asked  him  if  he  was  armed,  and 
when  he  said  "  No,"  he  took  off  his  revolvers 
and  threw  them  aside.  Then  they  started  at  a 
hard  fight.  Tittsworth  was  no  mean  antag- 
onist, and  he  gave  his  opponent  at  least  one 
mark  which  he  bears  to  this  day,  but  in  the 
end  Johnson  won,  and  took  his  man  off  to 
the  jail. 

Johnson  was  invited  to  Porum  to  help  to 
maintain  order  on  July  4th  when  there  were 
to  be  some  seasonable  celebrations.  The  Titts- 


90          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

worth  brothers  were  opening  a  cider  booth 
there. 

Johnson  was  called  away  at  the  last  moment 
on  some  more  urgent  business  and  sent  one  of 
his  assistants,  Sam.  Roberts,  accompanied  by 
Deputy  Marshal  Dr.  Sapper.  Roberts  unfor- 
tunately resembled  his  chief  in  height  and 
figure.  The  two  deputies  went  to  the  cider 
joint  to  seize  the  liquor  there.  A  professional 
"  bad  man,"  commonly  known  as  Jack  Bald- 
ridge,  but  whose  real  name  was  afterwards 
found  to  be  Jack  Pattman,  shot  at  Roberts,  in- 
stantly killing  him  and  then  turned  his  revolver 
on  Sapper,  inflicting  a  serious  wound. 

Pattman  at  once  cleared  out.  He  concealed 
himself  in  the  wild  country  and  sent  back 
messages  of  defiance,  daring  anyone  to  come 
and  fetch  him.  Bud  Ledbetter,  the  famous 
deputy,  and  Deputy  Grant  Cowan,  were  put 
on  his  track  and  traced  him  across  the  Cana- 
dian River  into  the  Choctaw  lands.  Patt- 
man's  brother  was  with  him.  Suddenly  they 
found  themselves  face  to  face  with  Ledbetter, 
who  had  revolvers  levelled  on  both  of  them 
and  curtly  bade  them  throw  up  their  hands. 


HOW  HE  WON  HIS  NAME        91 

They  were  quickly  handcuffed  and  shackled  to- 
gether and  taken  back  to  Muskogee,  the  people 
gathering  at  every  point  to  see  them  pass. 

When  Pattman  was  in  prison,  however,  his 
nerve  failed  him.  He  turned  State  evidence 
and  declared  that  he  had  committed  the  murder 
because  he  had  been  offered  $3,000  reward  by 
Tittsworth  to  kill  Roberts.  Afterwards  this 
confession  was  amended  and  he  said  that  the 
money  was  offered  to  him  to  kill  Johnson  and 
Dr.  Sapper.  The  Tittsworth  brothers  and 
Pattman  were  put  in  jail. 

Ben  Tittsworth  was  first  tried.  The  evi- 
dence in  his  case  was  very  conflicting,  some 
witnesses  declaring  that  he  shot  Sapper,  and 
others  that  Pattman  fired  both  shots.  Dr. 
Sapper's  own  account  was  that  when  he  en- 
tered the  booth  and  took  hold  of  the  cider  keg 
Ben  Tittsworth  seized  him  and  a  struggle  fol- 
lowed and  he  then  lost  consciousness.  The 
jury  was  unable  to  agree,  eight  voting  for  con- 
viction and  four  for  acquittal. 

Eugene  Tittsworth  was  then  placed  on  trial. 
Pattman  went  on  the  witness  stand  and  stated 
that  while  in  jail  at  Forth  Smith  with  Titts- 


92          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

worth,  the  latter  wanted  him  to  work  for  him. 
"  He  said  that  if  I  would  do  away  with  Sapper 
and  Johnson  I  would  be  paid  $2,000  or 
$3,000."  The  jury,  however,  refused  to  ac- 
cept his  statement  and  the  second  Tittsworth 
brother  was  found  "  Not  Guilty." 

There  was  a  man,  Ernest  Lewis,  on  the 
borderland  between  Kansas  and  the  Indian 
Territory  who  claimed  that  he  had  discovered 
a  strip  of  land  that  belonged  to  neither  State 
nor  Territory.  On  it  he  put  up  a  great 
gambling  establishment,  sixty  feet  long  and 
ten  feet  nine  inches  wide.  At  the  front  of  the 
building  there  was  a  bar  where  drinks  were 
freely  sold,  while  at  the  rear  of  the  bar 
roulette,  faro,  craps,  three-card  monte,  stud 
poker  and  baccarat  could  be  indulged  in  to 
the  heart's  content.  One  side  of  the  building 
faced  Kansas,  the  other  side  Indian  Territory. 
"  The  Sheriff  and  Marshal  from  Montgomery 
County,  Kansas,  can  sit  upon  the  outside  of  the 
building  and  see  the  thirsting  patrons  pass  in 
and  out;  they  can  hear  the  monotonous  rattle 
of  the  ball  around  the  roulette  wheel — but  they 


HOW  HE  WON  HIS  NAME        93 

are  powerless,"  wrote  one  local  scribe.  "  On 
the  other  side  of  the  structure  the  United 
States  marshals  of  Indian  Territory  sit  astride 
their  ponies  and  roll  cigarettes  as  the  dice 
bounce  on  the  table  and  they  can  hear  the  pop 
of  the  bung  from  a  fresh  beer  barrel  of  Bud- 
weiser — but  they  are  helpless.  Lewis  insists 
that  he  will  go  on  forever,  unmolested  by  the 
law.  It  will  remain  for  Congress  to  take  some 
action  before  Lewis  can  be  ousted  from  his 
gambler's  paradise." 

Alas  for  Ernest  Lewis!  He  had  forgotten 
to  reckon  with  Johnson.  A  few  days  later 
the  house  was  going  at  full  blaze  when  Johnson 
quietly  stepped  in  with  one  deputy  behind  him. 
He  did  not  seem  to  care  whether  the  place  was 
in  Kansas  or  Indian  Territory.  He  broke  the 
gambling  paraphernalia,  poured  out  the 
whisky,  scattered  the  frequenters,  arresting  the 
three  bartenders  and  landed  these  managers  of 
a  new  Monte  Carlo  in  jail.  "The  Monte 
Carlo  of  No-Man's  Land  has  been  put  out  of 
business  by  the  velvet-footed  man  with  the  soft 
voice  and  the  veiled  fist,"  said  the  Muskogee 
Phoenix. 


94          " PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

A  vivid  picture  of  Johnson's  work  at  this 
time  was  given  in  the  Literary  Digest  of  June 
J5>  I9°7-  I*  was  headed,  "  Special  Agent 
Johnson,  a  Prohibitionist  who  prohibits,"  and 
was  sent  from  Tulsa : 

"A  few  days  ago,  Special  Agent  Johnson  be- 
gan his  campaign  by  slipping  into  the  city  accom- 
panied by  three  picked  men,  arriving  shortly  be- 
fore midnight.  Their  movements  were  so  swift 
and  sudden  that  many  believed  there  were  ten 
times  that  number.  For  four  hours  the  business 
section  of  the  city  was  in  a  fever  of  excitement. 
In  that  time  three  big  gambling  houses  were  de- 
stroyed. The  flames  from  the  big  bonfires 
reached  as  high  as  the  tallest  buildings.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  burning  out  of  three  gambling  houses, 
about  five  hundred  bottles  of  whisky  were  seized 
and  destroyed  and  eleven  men  arrested.  The 
names  of  the  men  who  assisted  Johnson  in  this 
wild  night's  work  were  Sam  Cone,  Ed.  T.  Egan, 
and  Frank  West,  the  latter  being  an  allotted 
Creek  Indian  of  mixed  blood. 

"  In  the  two  days  following,  in  which  the  boot- 
leggers and  gamblers  were  chased  all  over  the 
city,  it  was  estimated  by  the  Tulsa  World,  the 
leading  daily  paper  here,  that  one  hundred  and 
fifty  gamblers  and  bootleggers  left  the  city. 

"  The  raiders  in  pairs  then  began  making 
•forays  in  the  surrounding  towns  of  the  oil  field 


HOW  HE  WON  HIS  NAME         95 

where  the  Texas  gamblers  had  found  abiding 
places,  and  were  attempting  to  sell  whisky  as  a 
side  line.  Many  of  these  trips  were  made  in 
wagons  as  the  "  spotters  "  of  the  gamblers  would 
telegraph  to  all  the  towns  on  the  railways  when- 
ever the  raiders  started  by  train  in  any  direction. 
"At  Collinsville,  the  gambling  house  was  de- 
stroyed, a  wagon  load  of  paraphernalia  being 
burned  in  the  streets,  and  about  fifty  gallons  of 
*  spiked  cider '  destroyed.  At  Mounds,  the  gam- 
bling house  of  *  Snake '  Morris,  a  small  quantity 
of  liquor  was  destroyed  in  a  drug  store.  At 
Skiatook,  the  gambling  house  of  '  Snake '  Morris 
was  burned  and  about  twenty  bottles  of  whisky 
destroyed.  Morris  and  his  brother  were  arrested 
and  taken  to  Tulsa,  where  they  were  placed  under 
$1,000  bonds  each  for  bootlegging.  Here  an 
advertised  '  bad  man '  named  Bill  Burke  armed 
himself  and  sought  to  frighten  the  officers  out 
of  town.  Johnson  at  once  turned  the  two  pris- 
oners over  to  his  assistant,  Cone,  and,  taking  his 
magazine  rifle,  started  down  the  middle  of  the 
street  to  give  battle  to  the  '  terror.'  The  special 
agent  was  covered  with  sweat  and  mud,  and 
blood  was  running  from  a  fresh  cut  in  his  hand 
received  from  broken  glass.  Burke  failed  to 
'  make  good '  when  thus  confronted.  On  the 
contrary,  he  jumped  on  a  horse  and  galloped 
for  the  woods  without  even  waiting  to  saddle 
his  horse  or  get  his  coat.  At  Tullahassee  there 
came  near  being  a  tragedy.  Johnson  sent  Cone 


96          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

on  a  hurry-up  trip  to  head  off  a  couple  of  trunks 
full  of  whisky  which  had  been  sent  there  as 
baggage.  Cone  seized  and  destroyed  the  liquor, 
and  found  it  necessary  to  spend  the  night  in  an 
old  house,  in  company  with  Dr.  Mann,  a  physi- 
cian at  Wagoner.  Tullahassee  is  a  settlement 
of  '  Creek  negroes.'  About  midnight  a  gang  of 
negroes  began  shooting  at  the  house.  Some  of 
the  bullets  struck  the  bed  on  which  Cone  and 
Mann  were  lying.  One  grazed  Cone's  hand  and 
another  pierced  his  clothes.  Mr.  Cone  and  Dr. 
Mann  went  into  the  darkness  and  returned  the 
negroes'  fire,  driving  them  away  and  arresting 
two  of  the  culprits,  whom  they  succeeded  in 
landing  in  jail  in  Muskogee. 

"  At  Red  Fork  a  small  quantity  of  liquor  was 
destroyed.  Two  raids  were  made  on  Sapulpa, 
the  last  one  being  marked  by  the  destruction  of 
two  big  gambling  houses,  one  for  the  second 
time.  Two  dray  loads  of  gambling  paraphernalia 
were  burned  at  noon  of  the  following  day.  John 
German,  a  leading  meat  dealer  of  the  city,  was 
caught  in  the  first  raid  by  Johnson,  who  found 
twenty-three  bottles  of  whisky  hidden  in  the 
walls  of  the  back  part  of  his  butcher  shop. 
German  is  now  under  $1,000  bonds  as  a  result 
of  the  find.  Numerous  other  seizures  were  made 
in  Tulsa,  the  largest  being  that  of  one  hundred 
pints  of  whisky  which  came  into  the  city  tied 
in  gunny  sacks  and  tied  to  the  rods  under  freight 
cars  arriving  from  Oklahoma.  This  capture  was 


HOW  HE  WON  HIS  NAME         97 

made  by  West  and  Egan.  Two  more  gambling 
houses  that  attempted  to  reopen  in  this  city  a  few 
days  ago  were  promptly  burned  out  by  West  and 
Cone. 

"  The  climax  came  in  this  city  in  a  monster 
bonfire  of  gambling  outfits  and  paraphernalia, 
the  result  of  a  ruse  on  the  part  of  Special  Agent 
Johnson.  Johnson  had  sent  all  of  his  men  out 
on  special  assignments,  and  left  town  himself, 
allowing  the  misinformation  to  leak  out  that  he 
had  departed  for  another  part  of  the  territory 
and  was  through  with  Tulsa  for  the  present. 
But  instead  he  suddenly  slipped  back  into  the 
city  at  nightfall.  In  the  meantime  Dick  Borden 
had  rushed  from  a  warehouse  a  full,  new,  and 
elaborate  gambling  outfit  for  his  hall  over  Tate 
Brady's  store.  He  had  installed  poker  tables,  a 
faro  bank,  crap  tables,  a  roulette  wheel,  Klondyke 
tables,  and  hung  mirrors  on  the  walls,  and  in- 
stalled a  new  outfit  of  furniture,  electric  fans, 
a  sideboard,  and  had  called  in  the  'customers/ 
About  thirty  gamblers  were  playing  when  sud- 
denly Johnson,  accompanied  only  by  United 
States  Deputy  Marshal,  O.  S.  Booth,  forced  open 
the  door. 

"In  an  instant  all  was  bedlam.  Everybody 
made  a  rush  for  the  back  window  and  began 
jumping  out  on  the  roof  of  an  adjoining  build- 
ing. Johnson  jumped  out  too,  and  drove  the 
gamblers  back  into  the  hall,  firing  a  few  shots 
at  their  feet  with  his  revolver  to  enforce  his 


98          "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

orders.  The  gamblers  then  made  a  rush  for  the 
front  stairway,  but  were  met  at  the  door  by 
Deputy  Marshal  Booth  with  a  drawn  revolver. 
After  the  gamblers  had  deposited  cash  bonds  for 
their  appearance  the  next  day,  there  came  a 
dramatic  struggle  for  the  $400  roulette  wheel. 
One  gambler  seized  it  and  ran  down  a  hallway, 
but  was  overtaken  and  floored  by  a  blow  from 
Johnson's  fist.  Another  then  seized  it,  threw 
it  out  of  a  window  into  an  alley,  where  a  con- 
federate grabbed  it  and  ran.  But  the  fugitive 
was  instantly  covered  by  Johnson,  who  appeared 
at  the  window  with  his  six-shooter.  The  fleeing 
gambler  dropped  the  wheel,  which  was  later  con- 
sumed in  the  flames.  At  this  juncture  a  squad 
of  police  arrived,  and  an  enormous  crowd,  which 
"had  been  attracted  by  the  shooting,  filled  the 
street,  and  witnessed  the  bonfire  of  a  thousand 
dollars'  worth  of  gambling  paraphernalia." 

Incidentally  Johnson  and  his  assistants 
seized  and  dumped  into  the  Arkansas  River 
25,000  bottles  in  that  little  raid. 

The  warmest  and  most  detailed  commenda- 
tion of  Johnson's  services  during  his  first  year 
of  office  was  given  in  the  report  of  the  Com- 
missioner of  Indian  Affairs,  dated  September 
30,  1907.  He  declared  that  the  hope  ex- 
pressed in  his  last  report — that  the  sale  of  in- 


HOW  HE  WON  HIS  NAME         99 

toxicating  liquors  to  Indians  would  be  greatly 
diminished — had  been  realized  beyond  all  ex- 
pectations. For  this  he  gave  credit  to  the 
services  of  Special  Officer  William  E.  Johnson. 

"  During  the  eleven  months  of  his  service,  he 
and  his  deputies  have  made,  or  directly  caused 
to  be  made,  491  arrests  in  whisky  cases  that  have 
resulted  in  grand  jury  indictments,  though  in  a 
considerable  number  of  instances  the  indictment 
was  procured  first  and  the  arrest  followed.  This 
list  is  exclusive  of  arrests  in  cases  where  the 
United  States  commissioner  failed  to  bind  the 
prisoner  over  to  the  grand  jury,  as  well  as  of 
many  arrests  made  by  deputy  marshals  on  infor- 
mation furnished  by  him. 

"  Owing  to  the  fact  that  nearly  all  the  gam- 
blers in  the  Indian  Territory  also  traffic  in  whisky 
or  are  active  abettors  of  whisky  peddling,  Mr. 
Johnson  has  had  occasion  to  make  war  on  those 
people,  and  his  raids  have  resulted  in  the  con- 
viction of  52  gamblers  and  the  destruction  of 
49  gambling  houses  and  the  collection  of  nearly 
$15,000  in  fines.  The  value  of  the  gambling 
paraphernalia  captured  has  been  estimated  at 
some  $12,000.  Arrests  in  other  cases  incidental 
to  his  work  but  not  exclusively  for  traffic  in  in- 
toxicants have  been  more  or  less  frequent,  and 
include  seven  for  the  high  crime  of  murder. 

"  These  results  have  not  been  attained  without 


100        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

hardship  and  peril.  Two  of  Mr.  Johnson's  men 
and  one  posse  man  have  been  killed  in  skirmishes 
with  bootleggers  and  10  violators  of  the  liquor 
laws  have  met  a  like  fate.  Mr.  Johnson  has  had 
several  narrow  escapes  himself,  and  during  a 
good  part  of  the  time  has  worked  in  the  face 
of  a  reward  of  $3,000  offered  by  outlaws  for 
his  assassination.  His  courage  and  devotion  to 
duty  deserve  the  highest  praise.  I  know  of  no 
more  efficient  officer  in  the  Indian  Service;  and 
indeed  I  may  safely  give  him  the  credit  of  turn- 
ing what  used  to  be  a  rather  dreary  farce  into 
an  actual  accomplishment  in  the  enforcement  of 
the  acts  of  Congress  forbidding  the  liquor  traffic 
in  the  Indian  Territory.  .  .  .  Mr.  Johnson  has 
seized  32  horses,  13  wagons,  13  sets  of  double 
harness,  and  five  saddles,  which  have  brought 
at  public  sale  $482.  During  the  eleven  months 
ended  on  June  3Oth,  he  and  his  deputies  have 
made  902  separate  seizures,  and  destroyed  in- 
toxicating liquors  in  the  following  quantities : 

Alcohol gallons       269 

Choctaw  beer 247 

Spiked  cider   3,329 

Intoxicating  bitters  . . .  bottles    3,286 

Beer    pints      4,637 

Wine "            286 

Low-grade  beer "       25,949 

Whisky "       28,559 

Brandy  and  liqueurs. .  175 


HOW  HE  WON  HIS  NAME       101 

There  was  at  least  one  other  occasion  when 
a  reward  was  offered  for  Johnson.  This  sec- 
ond occasion  had  its  humorous  side.  Let  John- 
son tell  the  story : 

"  I  went  up  to  Byars  and  an  enterprising 
fellow,  J.  D.  Lincoln,  was  running  a  pool  hall 
there.  He  sent  out  a  letter  stating  that  he  had 
a  man  who  would  kill  me  for  $1,000  and  he 
wanted  a  fund  to  be  collected  for  this  purpose. 
One  of  my  scouts  got  hold  of  one  of  those 
letters  and  found  that  Lincoln  had  collected 
about  $700.  So  my  assistant  arrested  him  and 
telegraphed  to  me  and  blazed  it  out  to  the 
newspapers.  At  Byars  I  looked  into  the  mat- 
ter and  satisfied  myself  that  he  did  not  have 
anybody  to  kill  me  and  had  no  intention  of 
killing  me.  All  he  wanted  was  the  dollars. 
That  rather  amused  me  and  so  I  went  round  to 
the  jail,  turned  him  loose  and  said  to  him, 
'  Get  out  and  get  the  rest  of  that  money.'  " 


VI 

MORE  ADVENTURES  IN  THE  WEST 

JOHNSON'S  reputation  as  a  fighter  was 
now     assured     throughout     the     West. 
Rumor  and  report  credited  him  with  mar- 
vellous deeds.     One  widely-quoted  story  told 
how  he  fought  threescore  men  single-handed, 
killing  three  of  them,  during  one  particularly 
daring  raid. 

This  story  arose,  however,  out  of  a  misun- 
derstanding. Johnson  heard  that  there  was  a 
pool  hall  in  Chelsea  in  Indian  Territory,  selling 
a  new  kind  of  drink.  He  determined  to  go  there 
and  obtain  some  of  the  drink  for  chemical 
analysis.  He  went,  apparently  single-handed, 
but  he  adopted  a  device  which  he,  on  several 
occasions,  found  of  the  greatest  service  in  his 
work.  While  entering  the  place  alone  from 
one  side  he  would  send  one  of  his  deputies  in 
from  the  other  side.  It  was  the  business  of 

102 


MORE  ADVENTURES  103 

the  deputy,  who  was  without  distinguishing 
marks,  to  mingle  with  the  crowd  as  one  of 
them  and  to  prevent  anybody  shooting  John- 
son from  the  rear.  On  this  occasion  the  de- 
vice undoubtedly  saved  Johnson's  life. 

The  two  left  their  horses  in  the  wood  and 
came  into  the  town  by  different  directions  after 
dusk.  Johnson  entered  the  pool  hall,  turned 
most  of  the  people  out,  locked  the  door,  made 
a  search  and  found  the  liquor  he  was  after. 

Meanwhile  the  people  of  the  place  held  a 
meeting  in  the  street  and  determined  to  give 
Johnson  a  hammering.  The  former  Town 
Marshal  was  elected  to  do  the  job.  Johnson 
opened  the  daor  to  go  out.  He  had  four  bottles 
under  one  arm.  As  he  stepped  into  the  dark- 
ness of  the  street,  the  ex-Town  Marshal  gave 
him  a  tremendous  blow  in  the  eye  with  his  fist. 
Johnson  staggered  back,  and  the  bottles  fell. 
A  second  blow  came  swiftly,  but  he  had  recov- 
ered sufficiently  to  ward  this  off  and  retorted 
with  a  heavy  blow  on  the  Town  Marshal's  jaw, 
knocking  him  clean  off  his  feet.  The  crowd 
thereupon  called  for  fair  play  and  formed  a 
ring.  Johnson  waited  till  the  man  was  on  his 


104        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

feet  again  and  soon  had  him  down  for  a 
second  time.  Once  more  he  came  on,  and 
a  third  time  he  was  knocked  over.  Then 
somebody  slipped  a  knife  into  his  hand  and 
he  rushed  at  Johnson  with  it,  but  Johnson 
hit  him  on  the  head  with  the  butt  of  a  billiard 
cue  and  he  went  down  like  a  log. 

A  free  fight  followed.  One  of  the  crowd 
standing  about  three  feet  from  Johnson's  head, 
drew  a  revolver  and  aimed  at  him.  Lowe,  his 
deputy,  who  was  in  the  crowd,  hit  the  man 
over  the  wrist  with  a  "  billy  "  and  the  bullet 
went  wide.  Then  the  Special  Officer  and  his 
deputy  went  for  the  crowd.  When  the  battle 
was  over  one  of  the  men  had  to  be  carried  out 
and  two  others  led  out  by  their  friends.  The 
Associated  Press  representative  circulated  the 
story  and  told  how  Johnson  had  "  sent  three 
men  to  sleep"  down  at  Chelsea.  This  was 
quickly  made  into  a  story  that  he  had  killed 
three  men. 

Oklahoma  was  now  emerging  into  State- 
hood. A  dual  election  was  held  on  September 
17,  1907,  for  the  people  of  the  then  Indian 
Territory  and  the  Territory  of  Oklahoma,  on 


MORE  ADVENTURES  105 

the  adoption  of  a  constitution  for  the  new  com- 
bined State  and  on  a  provision  for  state-wide 
prohibition.  There  was  a  desperate  fight  over 
the  prohibitional  proposal,  in  which  Johnson 
took  a  very  prominent  part.  Prohibition  was 
in  the  end  carried — 130,361  votes  for  and 
112,258  against. 

One  result  of  Oklahoma's  changed  status 
was  to  modify  considerably  Johnson's  position 
and  powers.  The  new  State  wiped  the  slate 
clean  of  a  large  number  of  cases  awaiting  trial. 
The  State  now  became  largely  responsible  for 
law  enforcement  formerly  carried  out  by  the 
Federal  authorities.  The  liquor  dealers 
thought  that  Johnson  would  at  any  rate  shut 
his  eyes  while  they  held  final  celebrations  of 
the  change.  They  made  a  very  great  mistake. 
He  raided  them  remorselessly  to  the  very  end. 

Early  in  1908  he  was  promoted  to  the  post 
of  "  Chief  Special  Officer."  His  field  was  now 
extended  to  cover  the  suppression  of  the  liquor 
traffic  on  all  the  Indian  Reserves  in  the  United 
States.  His  headquarters  were  removed  from 
Muskogee,  Oklahoma,  to  Salt  Lake  City,  and 
he  was  given  two  special  lieutenants  to  assist 


106        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

him,  Jess  E.  Flanders  in  the  Northwest,  and 
A.  G.  Pollock  in  the  Southwest.  The  annual 
appropriation  for  the  carrying  out  of  the  work 
of  liquor  suppression  was  increased  in  Con- 
gress from  $25,000  to  $40,000. 

Johnson  entered  into  his  new  duties  with  the 
same  zeal  that  he  had  shown  in  the  old.  His 
hand  was  soon  felt  down  in  California,  where 
sixteen  arrests  were  made.  A  Deputy  Sheriff 
found  himself  suddenly  arrested  in  New 
Mexico.  Then  there  came  a  big  raid  in  the 
Nezperce  Reservation  in  Idaho.  The  place 
was  first  carefully  examined,  a  number  of 
deputies  specially  sworn  in  for  the  occasion 
and  Indian  police  moved  forward  in  posses. 
All  the  principal  towns  were  raided  at  the 
same  time,  over  a  dozen  prominent  bootleggers 
arrested  and  their  stocks  of  liquor  destroyed. 

One  Chicago  newspaper  stated,  "  A  whirl- 
wind has  been  playing  havoc  among  the  whisky 
peddlers  of  the  Indian  Reservation  west  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains  since  July  1st,  when  William 
E.  Johnson  of  Maryland  was  made  Chief 
Special  Officer."  In  six  weeks  Johnson  and 
his  deputies  had  thrown  more  than  a  hundred 


u 


MORE  ADVENTURES  107 

whisky  peddlers  into  jail.  One  of  them  was 
now  in  prison  on  a  fifteen  months'  sentence 
and  many  more  were  bound  the  same  way. 

During  the  first  weeks  of  this  new  service  a 
dozen  officers  had  knockdown  fights,  two  had 
shooting  affrays,  and  they  were  compelled  to 
beat  one  man  into  submission  who  attacked 
one  of  the  officers  with  a  bowie  knife.  Their 
prisoners  included  one  Justice  of  the  Peace  in 
Montana,  two  policemen  and  one  official  of  the 
Government  Forest  Reservation  Service.  In 
Montana,  where  Johnson  personally  operated 
for  two  weeks,  the  criminal  business  piled  up 
so  rapidly  that  the  United  States  Attorney 
arranged  for  a  special  grand  jury  to  take  care 
of  the  fifty  cases  awaiting  attention.  One 
Calif ornian  "  bad  man  "  who  had  a  collection 
of  Indian  scalps,  and  boasted  that  he  used  to 
kill  Indians  so  as  to  get  their  teeth  for  rifle 
sights,  publicly  declared  that  he  would  "  meet 
Johnson  in  the  road  with  a  rifle  "  if  ever  he 
came  to  his  section.  Johnson  met  him  in  the 
desert,  sixty-five  miles  from  the  nearest  rail- 
way, captured  him  and  carried  him  overland  to 
jail.  When  he  arrived  in  Court  the  advertised 


108        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

"  bad  man  "  broke  down  and  wept.  One  of 
Johnson's  deputies  captured  three  whisky 
peddlers  across  the  South  Dakota  border,  and 
there  being  no  jail  at  hand,  he  chained  them 
to  a  tree  and  waited  until  a  Government  Com- 
missioner could  be  summoned  twenty  miles 
away. 

What  made  the  liquor  interest  specially  ap- 
prehensive was  Johnson's  reputation  for  never 
letting  go.  If  men  tried  to  escape  conviction 
by  committing  perjury  he  would  hunt  down 
their  lies  and  prove  them  to  be  lies.  The 
whisky  peddlers  found  that  the  best  thing  they 
could  do  when  Johnson  had  them,  was  to  own 
up,  plead  guilty  and  take  their  medicine.  An- 
other habit  of  Johnson's  was  to  go  after  the 
biggest  men  and  secure  their  conviction.  This 
helped  to  drive  the  smaller  fry  away. 

One  very  important  prosecution  which  John- 
son initiated,  was  known  as  the  Ninety-mile 
Alibi  Case.  In  the  autumn  of  1908  two  of 
Johnson's  assistants  who  were  working  in  the 
vicinity  of  the  Crow  Reservation  in  Montana 
caught  a  saloonkeeper,  D.  R.  Wills,  red- 
handed,  selling  drink  to  a  squaw  over  the  bar. 


MORE  ADVENTURES  109 

Wills  was  indicted  by  the  grand  jury,  but  hav- 
ing abundant  resources,  he  hired  lawyers  and 
put  up  a  stiff  fight.  He  pleaded  an  alibi.  "  I 
had  a  bartender  who  impersonated  me,  sold 
the  liquor  and  has  since  disappeared,"  he  de- 
clared. Six  men  came  into  court  and  swore 
that  Wills  was  ninety  miles  away  at  the  time 
when  the  drink  was  sold.  The  jury,  however, 
returned  a  verdict  of  "  Guilty  "  and  Wills  was 
sentenced  to  seventy  days  in  jail  and  $100  fine. 

Johnson  reproached  the  Judge  for  the  in- 
adequacy of  his  sentence.  "  This  case  cost  me 
a  lot  of  work,"  he  said.  "  If  you  only  give  the 
man  a  trivial  sentence  like  that  when  found 
guilty  it  is  not  worth  my  while."  "  You  go  out 
and  get  these  fellows  for  perjury,"  the  Judge 
replied,  "and  then  I  will  show  you  some- 
thing." 

Johnson  promptly  put  two  of  his  best  men 
on  the  trail.  The  District  Attorney,  during  the 
trial,  had  spent  two  days  examining  the  wit- 
nesses as  to  where  they  were,  who  they  talked 
to  and  so  on.  Every  statement  of  theirs  was 
carefully  analyzed  and  as  a  result,  six  men 
were  arrested  on  a  charge  of  perjury.  Johnson 


110        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

concentrated  on  the  one  of  the  six  whom  he 
judged  to  be  the  weakest,  William  Bartlett,  and 
induced  him  to  confess  the  whole  business. 

When  the  trial  for  perjury  came  on  Bart- 
lett took  the  stand  and  told  his  story.  The  re- 
maining prisoners  promptly  abandoned  their 
defense,  pleaded  guilty  and  received  sentences 
of  from  three  to  eighteen  months  hard  labor, 
with  substantial  fines.  Liquor  perjury  was  at 
a  discount  for  a  time  in  the  Indian  country 
after  this. 

In  the  summer  of  1909  one  of  Johnson's 
deputies,  Charles  Escalanti,  a  full-blooded 
Yuma  Indian,  was  fatally  stabbed  by  two 
Mexicans  who  came  to  the  Indian  Reservation 
with  whisky  and  whom  he  intended  to  arrest. 
Escalanti  was  very  badly  wounded,  and  after 
lingering  for  two  weeks,  died.  He  had  been 
conspicuous  in  the  effort  to  break  up  the  liquor 
traffic  among  his  people  and  a  year  before  had 
been  set  upon  and  nearly  beaten  to  death  by 
a  crowd  of  toughs.  He  was  only  one  of  sev- 
eral killed  in  the  work. 

Special  campaigns  were  planned  in  different 
cities,  and  with  both  sides  armed,  the  fights 


MORE  ADVENTURES  111 

that  occasionally  followed  demanded  nerve  and 
resource.  The  year  ending  June  3oth,  1909, 
can  be  taken  as  fairly  typical.  During  that 
period  Johnson  and  his  men  made  1,091  ar- 
rests, secured  548  convictions,  including  about 
350  grand  jury  convictions  mostly  for  selling 
liquor  to  Indians.  Forty-nine  men  out  of 
every  fifty  who  went  to  trial  were  convicted. 

Johnson  caused  a  certain  number  of  men 
who  were  notorious  law  breakers  to  be  turned 
out  of  the  Indian  Territory  on  the  ground  that 
they  were  detrimental  to  the  peace  and  safety 
of  the  Indians.  Some  of  these  promptly 
brought  damage  suits  against  him. 

A  very  interesting  battle  was  fought  in 
Minnesota  in  1909.  Johnson  hunted  out 
Article  7  of  the  Treaty  with  the  Chippewa 
Indians  in  1855,  which  provided  that  the  Pro- 
hibition Laws  in  the  Indian  country  should 
continue  and  be  enforced  within  the  entire 
boundary  of  the  ceded  country  until  other- 
wise provided  by  Congress.  Congress  had 
never  made  any  provision  revoking  this  sec- 
tion of  the  Treaty.  The  greater  part  of  the 
northern  half  of  Minnesota  lay  within  the 


112        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

boundaries  of  this  Treaty  Territory.  Johnson, 
therefore,  gave  all  the  liquor  dealers  of  Mah- 
nomen  County  thirty  days'  notice  to  close  up 
their  saloons  and  remove  any  and  all  of  their 
intoxicating  liquors  to  points  outside  the  dis- 
trict. 

The  announcement  caused  a  great  sensation 
and  the  liquor  authorities  determined  to  defy 
the  Federal  directions.  The  General  Counsel 
of  the  Minnesota  State  Brewers  Association 
made  three  trips  to  Washington  to  have  the 
matter  squashed,  but  the  Department  of  Jus- 
tice took  the  same  view  of  the  law  as  Johnson. 
Counsel  for  the  breweries  offered  to  co-operate 
with  Johnson  and  eliminate  traffic  with  the 
Indians.  He  held  meetings  of  liquor  dealers 
and  secured  pledges  in  writing  from  all  of 
them  in  one  district,  the  Leech  Lake  Reserva- 
tion, to  quit  selling  to  Indians.  In  other  dis- 
tricts, however,  the  liquor  dealers  refused  to 
have  anything  to  do  with  the  movement,  de- 
claring that  they  were  operating  their  own 
saloons  and  would  do  as  they  pleased. 

Johnson  began  his  operations  by  notifying 
the  saloonkeepers  of  Mahnomen  County  to  quit 


MORE  ADVENTURES  113 

business  in  thirty  days.  All  except  eight  did  so. 

After  the  time  limit  had  expired  Johnson 
allowed  the  eight  dealers  a  few  days  to  re- 
plenish their  stock,  which  many  did,  thinking 
the  order  was  a  "  bluff."  Then  one  day  a  simul- 
taneous raid  was  made  at  ten  o'clock  on  these 
eight  saloons  in  and  around  Mahnomen.  John- 
son quietly  brought  his  deputies  into  the  place, 
divided  them  up  into  squads  for  each  saloon, 
and  gave  them  the  signal  for  action  by  step- 
ping out  of  his  hotel  with  a  cigar  in  his  mouth. 
He  took  as  his  part  of  the  work  two  saloons 
where  trouble  was  expected.  The  first  of  these 
was  thoroughly  smashed  up.  He  was  busy  in 
the  second  saloon  when  some  people  knocked 
at  the  door,  and  a  voice  said,  "  We  are  the 
Mayor  and  City  Council.  We  are  going  to 
stop  this."  "  Get  away,"  Johnson  replied 
brusquely,  "  I  am  busy."  He  slammed  the 
door  and  kept  on. 

A  few  minutes  later  the  City  Marshal,  ac- 
companied by  a  posse  of  armed  citizens,  ar- 
rived on  the  scene.  The  Marshal  had  his  gun 
with  him,  but  he  forgot  to  hold  it  in  the  right 
position  for  action.  As  he  forced  his  way  in 


"PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

with  the  gun  hanging  by  his  side  he  found 
himself  suddenly  looking  into  the  black  muzzle 
of  Johnson's  business-like  revolver.  "  I  repre- 
sent the  Department  of  Indian  Affairs,"  said 
Johnson  quietly.  "  I  represent  the  United 
States  Government,  and  you  and  your  men  had 
better  get  out  of  here  until  we  finish  our  work." 
The  Marshal  protested.  "  Suddenly  Johnson 
became  transformed,"  wrote  a  local  reporter 
at  the  time.  "  '  Get  out  of  here/  he  thundered, 
advancing  a  step  in  the  direction  of  the  fright- 
ened Marshal  and  his  posse,  and  they  accepted 
the  invitation."  They  went  out,  rang  the  fire 
bell,  and  soon  the  whole  town  came  marching 
down  the  street  headed  by  the  sheriff  of  the 
county.  Everybody  who  had  a  gun  carried  it 
and  those  who  had  no  guns  brought  pitch- 
forks. 

Johnson  had  now  completed  his  work  of 
breaking  up  the  bottles  of  liquor.  He  quietly 
went  out  into  the  street  and  walked  up  to  the 
sheriff  and  asked  gently,  "  Do  you  want  to 
arrest  me?"  "Yes,  I  do,"  stammered  the 
sheriff.  "Well,  go  ahead  and  arrest  me." 
And  so  the  arrest  was  made.  "  Come  and  be 


MORE  ADVENTURES  115 

arrested,"  Johnson  called  to  his  deputies.  He 
asked  the  sheriff  if  he  wanted  any  more.  The 
rest  were  at  the  hotel.  He  could  go  round  and 
get  them.  Then  he  invited  him  to  arrest  the 
deputies  who  were  elsewhere  in  the  district  by 
issuing  orders  over  the  long  distance  telephone. 

By  this  time  the  sheriff  had  become  uneasy, 
and  suspected  that  Johnson  was  fooling  him. 
"  Go  to  hell,"  he  said  roughly,  "  I  have  already 
more  than  I  want." 

The  saloonkeepers  in  Mahnomen  had  at  the 
first  alarm  sent  out  telephone  calls  to  their 
fellows  in  the  neighboring  places,  warning 
them  that  Johnson  was  on  a  raiding  expedi- 
tion, and  that  they  had  better  look  after  them- 
selves. "  Too  late,"  came  back  the  mournful 
reply,  "  our  places  have  all  been  raided  too." 

Johnson  and  his  men  were  arraigned  before 
the  local  Justice  of  the  Peace.  He  told  his 
deputies  to  say  nothing,  and  to  let  him  do  the 
talking.  The  Justice  read  the  warrant,  and 
asked  if  he  desired  an  examination,  or  if  he 
pleaded  guilty.  Johnson  replied  that  he  would 
not  plead.  "  But  you  have  to  plead."  "  Have 
I  ? "  came  the  reply.  "  Suppose  I  don't  plead, 


116        "  PUSSYFOOT  "  JOHNSON 

what  will  happn  then?"  The  Justice  there- 
upon put  down  a  technical  plea  of  "  not  guilty." 
Johnson  refused  to  offer  bonds.  "  But  you 
must  get  a  bondsman,"  said  the  Justice.  "  We 
have  no  jail  to  keep  you  in."  "  Well,"  replied 
Johnson,  "  we  will  wait  here  until  you  build  a 
jail." 

Finally  the  party  were  taken  to  the  City  Hall 
and  shut  up  there.  Some  humorist  telephoned 
to  the  sheriff  that  150  Indians  were  on  the 
way  to  rescue  Johnson  and  his  men. 

It  was  Johnson's  purpose  and  the  purpose  of 
the  Federal  Authorities  to  secure  a  clear  legal 
pronouncement  that  would  place  beyond  ques- 
tion, once  for  all,  what  the  law  was.  They 
feared  that  if  he  was  brought  up  before  a 
judge  merely  on  a  charge  of  smashing,  the 
judge  would  dismiss  the  whole  case  on  a 
technicality.  To  avoid  this  Johnson  sent  for 
the  Assistant  County  Attorney.  "  I  and  my 
men  have  smashed  up  $7,000  worth  of  your 
goods,"  he  said.  "  Why  don't  you  put  your- 
self in  a  position  to  get  your  money  back? 
You  should  make  a  record  of  what  I  actually 
broke,  and  I  won't  dispute  it."  The  County 


MORE  ADVENTURES  117 

Prosecutor,  wondering  at  Johnson's  simplicity, 
was  ready  to  assent,  but  feared  that  it  was  too 
late.  The  party  were  already  arraigned  on 
charges.  "  Wipe  off  the  record,"  said  John- 
son generously,  "  and  make  a  new  one.  I 
won't  object." 

The  attorney  was  so  overcome  that  he  of- 
fered to  sign  half  a  bond  for  Johnson's  men  if 
Johnson  signed  the  other  half,  and  let  them  go. 
That  did  not  suit  Johnson's  purpose.  He 
forced  the  authorities  to  take  him  and  his  men 
to  prison  at  Crookston,  a  neighboring  place 
where  there  was  a  jail.  From  there  they  were 
released  on  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus  sued  out 
in  the  Federal  Court.  When  the  trial  came  on 
a  definite  ruling  was  secured  that  Johnson  not 
only  had  the  right  to  do  what  he  did,  but  that 
it  was  his  duty  to  do  so. 

The  case  was  eventually  carried  to  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States.  John- 
son won.  "  That  was  the  way  I  deliberately 
went  to  jail,"  he  said,  when  telling  the  story. 


VII 
JOHNSON  RESIGNS 

"'  DUSSYFOOT'  J°HNSON  has  put 

more  saloons  out  of  business  in  a 
given  time  than  any  man  now  on 
earth,"  a  newspaper  writer  in  Minnesota  de- 
clared early  in  1911.  The  statement  was  justi- 
fied. Johnson  and  his  assistants  were  now  con- 
victing men,  many  of  them  men  of  means,  at 
the  rate  of  a  hundred  per  month,  month  in  and 
month  out  His  services  had  been  extended 
until  it  now  received  a  direct  appropriation  of 
$80,000  a  year  and  about  one  hundred  men 
worked  under  him  on  the  one  task  of  prevent- 
ing the  sale  of  liquor  to  Indians. 

Wherever  possible  these  assistants  were  In- 
dians themselves.  They  did  not  let  red  tape 
stand  in  the  way  of  effective  action.  "  We 
have  not  been  very  tender  in  our  dealings  with 
these  hyenas  who  would  get  an  Indian  drunk 
118 


JOHNSON  RESIGNS  119 

so  as  to  rob  him  of  his  blanket,"  wrote  John- 
son in  that  same  year.  "  Nothing  but  the 
unrelenting  cold  steel  of  absolute  justice  will 
have  any  effect  on  the  cuticle  of  such.  There 
is  no  quarter  asked  or  given,  and  no  sympathy 
wasted." 

But  there  was  one  offense  for  which  John- 
son never  invoked  the  law.  He  did  not  once 
prosecute  a  man  for  making  an  assault  on  him 
or  attempting  his  life.  In  place  of  that  he  went 
for  the  man. 

Here  is  a  typical  statement  of  his,  made 
about  this  time :  "  In  some  States  we  fol- 
low a  radically  different  course  than  in 
others.  Conditions  and  laws  are  not  always 
the  same  in  different  localities,  even  of  the 
same  State.  This  not  only  confuses  friends 
but  confuses  the  enemy.  When  I  get  a  joint 
keeper  on  the  carpet,  he  often  asks  why  I  do 
this  with  him  and  do  something  else  with  the 
offender  in  the  adjoining  State.  My  stereo- 
typed reply  is  '  Go  hire  a  lawyer.'  The  lawyer 
usually  skins  the  offender  out  of  most  of  the 
money  that  he  has  skinned  out  of  the  In- 
dians. The  scamp  is  thus  punished  even 


120        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

though  we  fail  to  convict,  which  seldom 
happens." 

Between  1907  and  the  end  of  January,  1911, 
Johnson  and  his  deputies  made  5,473  arrests. 
He  aroused  a  very  great  amount  of  bitter  per- 
sonal enmity  against  himself.  The  liquor 
dealers  saw  in  him  not  merely  an  active  of- 
ficial but  a  personal  foe.  Many  of  these  men 
used  all  their  political  influence  to  have  him 
removed.  While  Roosevelt  was  President  they 
tried  in  vain,  but  when  Roosevelt  was  suc- 
ceeded by  Taft,  and  Mr.  Leupp  was  eventually 
succeeded  by  a  new  acting  Commissioner  of 
Indian  Affairs,  it  became  evident  that  John- 
son's enemies  were  obtaining  more  influence  in 
the  Interior  Department. 

Adverse  influences  in  this  department  sought 
to  compel  Mr.  Johnson  to  recommend  to  the 
President  the  annulment  of  all  the  anti-liquor 
clauses  in  Indian  treaties  involving  the  State 
of  Minnesota  and  some  neighboring  States. 
Johnson  prepared  an  elaborate  report,  recom- 
mending the  annulment  of  certain  anti -liquor 
clauses  that,  for  one  reason  or  another,  were 
ineffective,  but  strongly  recommending  the  re- 


JOHNSON  RESIGNS  121 

tention  of  the  useful  clauses,  especially  involv- 
ing territory  really  inhabited  by  Indians.  He 
secured  the  approval  of  Robert  G.  Valentine, 
for  a  short  time  Indian  Commissioner,  to  this 
recommendation,  and  thus  fortified,  he  laid  the 
matter  before  the  Department.  There  fol- 
lowed a  stormy  scene,  in  which  Johnson  was 
violently  accused  of  insubordination,  but  he 
stubbornly  held  his  ground,  backed  by  Com- 
missioner Valentine.  The  outcome  was  that 
President  Taft  finally  followed  the  recommen- 
dation, revoking  only  those  clauses  which  were 
ineffective  and  retaining  those  of  real  value. 
Johnson's  bold  stand  in  defeating  the  plot  to 
destroy  the  effectiveness  of  these  Indian 
treaties  involved  him  in  further  trouble  with 
department  chiefs  who,  from  that  time  on,  re- 
doubled their  efforts  to  "  get  him." 

Following  this  a  number  of  prominent  of- 
fenders were  pardoned  by  presidential  action 
after  being  convicted  of  selling  drink  to  In- 
dians. The  Chief  Officer  found  in  different 
ways  that  spokes  were  being  put  into  the 
wheels  of  his  activities. 

The  relations  between  Johnson  and  the  De- 


122        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

partment  at  Washington  reached  a  crisis  later 
on  in  1911,  over  the  case  of  Juan  Cruz,  one  of 
Johnson's  assistants  among  the  Pueblo  Indians, 
who  was  charged  with  murder. 

The  condition  of  things  in  New  Mexico  had 
for  some  time  been  unsatisfactory.  For  sev- 
eral years  a  group  of  American  and  Mexican 
politicians  had  run  their  cattle  on  a  Pueblo 
Indian  thirty-thousand  acre  reservation  with- 
out compensation.  It  was  openly  stated  that 
the  Local  Superintendent  of  Indian  Affairs 
played  into  the  hands  of  these  land-grabbers, 
and  he  was  further  charged  with  permitting 
the  sale  of  drinks  to  Indians  in  a  drug  store 
at  Santa  Fe  in  which  he  was  interested. 

Conditions  were  very  strained  between  the 
Superintendent  and  the  Indians  themselves. 
Johnson  found  himself  up  against  the  same 
Superintendent  in  various  ways. 

The  Santa  Clara  Indians  became  crusaders 
in  a  great  voluntary  total  abstinence  cam- 
paign. They  sent  delegates  to  other  Indian 
communities  and  formed  a  federation  which 
soon  included  almost  every  Pueblo  Indian  in 
New  Mexico,  for  the  purpose  of  stamping  out 


JOHNSON  RESIGNS  123 

the  liquor  traffic  and  protecting  themselves 
from  the  robbery  of  their  land  and  pasturage. 

Juan  Cruz  was  one  of  the  early  recruits  in 
this  federation.  Johnson  described  him  as  "  A 
young  Indian  Sir  Galahad.  .  .  .  £ruz  had 
the  spirit  of  a  crusader.  He  was  devoted  to 
his  church,  to  his  young  wife,  Dolorita,  and  to 
their  baby,  Jose."  One  of  Johnson's  assist- 
ants made  Juan  posseman  deputy  and  employed 
him  on  various  occasions,  Juan  being  officially 
paid  for  his  services. 

The  Superintendent  advised  some  Indians 
who  objected  to  Juan's  activities  that  he  had 
no  authority  and  that  no  attention  should  be 
paid  to  him.  Four  rough  Indians  of  bad  char- 
acter attacked  Juan  while  he  was  seizing  a 
bottle  of  whisky  which  one  of  them  had  just 
purchased.  They  beat  him  with  stones  and 
clubs,  smashing  in  his  mouth  and  loosening 
two  of  his  teeth.  Juan  drew  his  revolver  and 
fired,  hitting  the  leader,  Garcia,  who  died  an 
hour  later. 

Juan  was  arrested  for  murder.  The  Super- 
intendent took  up  an  unfriendly  attitude  and 
to  Johnson's  astonishment  the  authorities  at 


124        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

Washington  telegraphed  to  him  to  take  no 
steps  in  the  matter  of  his  defense  since  Cruz 
was  not  a  commissioned  employee.  "  I  could 
not  see  the  boy  go  to  the  gallows  undefended," 
said  Johnson.  Since  the  Department  refused 
to  help  he  went  to  some  leaders  of  the 
Women's  Christian  Temperance  Union.  They 
promptly  organized  a  Defense  Committee. 
The  affair  had  by  this  time  received  so  much 
publicity  that  the  Department  cancelled  its 
first  instructions  and  ordered  Johnson  to  do 
all  that  he  could  for  Juan.  In  the  end  the 
Indian  was  found  "  Not  guilty  "  and  released. 

But  there  was  now  a  condition  of  almost 
open  war  between  Johnson  and  the  Washing- 
ton Department.  He  protested  vigorously 
against  the  theft  of  the  Indian  lands.  He  was 
called  up  to  Washington  and  there  given  a 
very  unfriendly  reception.  "  You  are  getting 
too  many  convictions  and  it  is  causing  trouble," 
one  politician  told  him. 

Attempts  were  made  to  make  trouble  over 
some  of  his  payments.  He  was  charged  with 
insubordination,  and  after  a  hot  controversy 
resigned  his  office.  The  Acting  Secretary  of 


JOHNSON  RESIGNS  125 

the  Department  of  the  Interior  gave  out  a 
statement  that  no  fault  had  been  found  with  his 
integrity  or  with  his  character,  but  both  the 
Department  of  the  Interior  and  Mr.  Johnson 
himself  thought  that  it  would  be  better  for 
him  to  quit  the  service  because  certain  views 
he  held  regarding  the  administration  of  his 
office  did  not  coincide  with  those  held  by  the 
Department. 

The  resignation  excited  widespread  com- 
ment. The  newspapers  openly  attributed  it  to 
a  cabal  of  the  liquor  interests.  Johnson  re- 
ceived many  expressions  of  sympathy.  But 
what  perhaps  pleased  him  most  was  a  letter 
from  his  Indian  friends : 

ESPANOLA,  N.  M.,  Sept.  19,  1911. 
"  MR.  W.  E.  JOHNSON, 

Chief  Special  Officer, 

U.  S.  I.  S.,  Denver  Colo. 
"DEAR  SIR, 

"The  Pueblo  of  Santa  Clara,  mindful  of  its 
regeneration  through  your  efforts,  most  cordially 
invites  you  to  be  its  guest  for  as  long  a  time  as 
you  will  enjoy  it.  Horses,  saddles,  guns,  guides 
and  tents,  with  the  best  rations  at  our  command, 
will  be  provided  you  as  long  as  you  can  make 


126        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

use  of  them.  We  hope  you  will  come  to  us  and 
go  to  the  mountains  for  a  much  needed  rest. 
All  we  have  is  yours  now  and  always.  This  is 
but  small  pay  for  the  manhood  you  have  restored 
to  this  village  by  stopping  the  liquor  traffic  here. 
We  know  you  helped  us  at  the  price  of  your 
position.  No  other  man  in  the  Indian  Service 
would  have  risked  his  head  by  staying  with  us 
and  saving  the  life  of  Juan  Cruz.  You  may  go 
down  in  apparent  defeat  before  the  whisky  ring 
at  Washington  but  in  the  hearts  of  a  quarter  of 
a  million  American  Indians  you  are  a  hero. 
There  is  probably  not  one  of  this  great  number 
but  what  had  come  under  the  influence  of  your 
work. 

"  Come  and  be  a  good  Indian  with  us. 
"  Very  sincerely, 

"  THE  COUNCIL  OF  SANTA  CLARA. 

"By  VlCTORIANO    SlSNEROS, 

"Acting  Governor." 


VIII 

THE  CAMPAIGN  FOR  NATIONAL 
PROHIBITION 

JOHNSON  went  straight  back  to  his  old 
business  as  a  temperance  writer  and  or- 
ganizer.   He  took  up,  for  a  time,  literary 
and  research  work  for  the  Presbyterian  Gen- 
eral Assembly  Committee  on  Temperance,  and 
shortly  afterwards  accepted  the  post  of  Man- 
aging Editor  of  the  American  Issue  Publica- 
tions,  the  literary   side   of   the   Anti-Saloon 
League.    He  started  a  paper  for  the  League, 
the  New  'Republic,  at  the  beginning  of  1913. 

The  Indian  Department  tried  to  make 
trouble  for  him  and  he  had  a  battle  over  his 
accounts.  Johnson  had  engaged  a  doctor  as 
medical  expert  in  the  trial  of  Juan  Cruz.  The 
Indian  Office  questioned  the  engagement,  re- 
fused to  pay  the  doctor's  hotel  bills  and  cut 
down  his  fees  from  $10  a  day  to  $5,  out  of 
127 


128        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

which  the  doctor  was  to  meet  all  his  own 
expenses.  Johnson  promptly  hit  back.  He 
sent  a  letter  to  all  the  medical  papers,  stating 
the  facts  and  asking  them  if  they  thought  the 
official  estimate  by  the  United  States  Govern- 
ment of  the  value  of  an  American  physician's 
services  was  fair.  This  publicity  produced 
such  a  storm  of  protest  in  the  medical  press 
against  the  Government's  action  that  the  au- 
thorities were  glad  to  yield.  But  they  still  kept 
back  certain  accounts,  and  the  dispute  over 
these  was  not  ended  until  the  beginning  of 
1920,  when  a  special  Act  of  Congress  was 
carried,  settling  the  matter  in  Johnson's  favor. 
The  fighting  reformer  soon  made  his  per- 
sonality felt  in  his  new  field.  The  Rev.  U.  G.' 
Robinson,  formerly  an  Anti-Saloon  League 
official,  had  for  some  time,  while  professing 
to  be  a  temperance  reformer,  devoted  himself 
to  stirring  up  strife  within  the  ranks  of  the 
prohibitionists.  The  people  he  attacked  had 
submitted  quietly,  not  knowing  what  else  to 
do.  Johnson  got  after  Robinson,  investigated 
his  career  and  published  a  detailed  exposure 
which  finished  that  particular  adventurer's  ac- 


NATIONAL  PROHIBITION        129 

tivity.  He  showed  that  Robinson  was  really 
in  the  pay  of  the  liquor  interests,  and  he  se- 
cured and  reproduced  letters  from  Robinson  to 
the  liquor  organizations  and  from  the  liquor 
organizations  to  Robinson,  placing  this  beyond 
doubt. 

"For  a  year  or  more,"  wrote  Johnson, 
"  this  monumental  Iscariot  has  been  playing 
both  ends  against  the  middle.  He  has  been 
getting  money  from  radical  prohibitionists  to 
fight  the  Anti-Saloon  League  with.  He  has 
been  getting  money  from  the  National  Liquor 
League  to  fight  the  Anti-Saloon  League  with 
and  using  it  to  fight  the  very  prohibitionists 
who  were  giving  him  the  money  with  which 
to  fight  the  Anti-Saloon  League  people.  From 
his  dark  cellar  in  St.  Louis  he  has  been  pour- 
ing into  the  mails  with  liquor  money  a  veri- 
table flood  of  slime,  smearing  indiscriminately 
nearly  everybody  who  has  lifted  up  his  voice 
against  the  saloon.  He  has  been  blocking, 
thwarting,  undermining  the  work  of  all  pro- 
hibitionists to  secure  any  legislation  what- 
ever." 

Robinson  retorted  with  a  savage  attack  on 


130        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

Johnson.  Johnson  retorted  with  a  suit  for 
libel.  Johnson  was  awarded  $1,500  damages, 
and  the  Rev.  U.  C.  Robinson  was  finished. 

Next  came  the  adventure  of  the  Trevitt 
Letters.  A  fight  was  being  waged  for  State 
prohibition  in  West  Virginia  and  the  prohibi- 
tionists had  reason  to  believe  that  some  papers 
there  were  looking  for  an  opportunity  to  sell 
themselves  to  the  liquor  side.  Johnson  had 
letters  sent  out,  signed  by  C.  L.  Trevitt,  a 
"  literary  agent "  at  Washington,  D.  C.,  offer- 
ing to  furnish  matter  and  to  pay  liberally  in 
advance  u  for  the  privilege  of  laying  argu- 
ments against  Prohibition  before  your  readers. 
.  .  .  Advise  me  what  rate  per  line  you  will 
charge  for  pure  reading  matter  without  adver- 
tising marks  and  also  what  rate  you  will  charge 
for  editorial  matter.  I  am  willing  to  pay  for 
editorials  against  prohibition,  even  if  written 
by  yourself."  The  letter  was  sent  out  to  a 
large  number  of  papers,  the  majority  of  them 
falling  into  the  trap.  Some  of  them  asked 
that  the  promised  money  might  be  sent  by 
wire.  "  I  am  in  the  market  for  business," 
wrote  one  editor,  a  Sunday  School  superinten- 


NATIONAL  PROHIBITION        131 

dent,  "  and  I  accept  your  proposition.  I  am 
hard  up,  too,  and  the  sooner  you  send  your 
matter  and  a  small  check,  the  better  it  will  be 
for  me." 

Out  of  seventy  papers  approached,  less  than 
ten  unequivocally  refused  to  sell  their  columns. 

When  Johnson  published  his  exposure  with 
photographic  copies  of  the  various  letters, 
there  was  a  furore  in  West  Virginia  and  the 
editors  naturally  turned  on  him  and  could  find 
no  words  hard  enough  for  him.  "Forger," 
"  Vulture,"  "  Blackmailer,"  were  among  the 
mildest  of  their  names  for  him.  Many  people 
not  sympathetic  to  the  liquor  trade  dislike  this 
method  of  fighting  it.  Johnson  had  no  hesi- 
tation. "  These  were  the  rascals  I  was  after," 
Johnson  told  Collier's  Weekly.  "  I  have  no 
apologies  to  make.  I  went  out  after  scamps 
and  got  them.  It  is  not  the  first  time  I  have 
set  bear  traps  for  crooks." 

Johnson  was  now  finding  himself  more  and 
more  absorbed  in  the  work  of  the  Anti-Saloon 
League,  to  which  he  was  from  this  time  to 
devote  his  life.  The  Anti-Saloon  League,  the 
main  force  in  carrying  national  prohibition  in 


132        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

the  United  States,  differed  materially  from 
the  older  Prohibition  Party.  The  purpose  of 
"both  was  the  same,  to  end  the  liquor  trade,  but 
the  Prohibition  Party  had  as  a  Party,  to  frame 
a  program  covering  all  kinds  of  political  and 
social  issues  on  which  there  were  profound  dif- 
ferences of  opinion  among  men  opposed  to  the 
liquor  traffic.  The  American  people  were  be- 
coming growingly  wearied  of  party  machines. 
The  whole  tendency  of  recent  years  had  been 
in  the  direction  of  placing  more  and  more 
power  in  the  hands  of  the  electors.  The  Aus- 
tralian ballot,  the  Power  of  Recall  and  similar 
measures  all  meant  insuring  the  elector  more 
direct  power  in  actual  legislation  and  control. 
The  Prohibition  Party  was  pulling  right 
against  the  stream  all  the  time. 

The  Anti-Saloon  League  went  on  another 
plan.  "  The  League  pledges  itself  to  avoid 
-affiliation  with  any  political  party  as  such  and 
to  maintain  an  attitude  of  strict  neutrality  on 
all  questions  of  public  policy  not  directly  and 
immediately  concerned  with  the  traffic  in 
•strong  drink,"  was  the  second  clause  in  its 
Constitution. 


NATIONAL  PROHIBITION         133 

The  League  owes  its  life  largely  to  the  pio- 
neer activities  of  Dr.  Howard  H.  Russell  who 
organized  the  Ohio  Anti-Saloon  League  in 
1893  and  who  carried  on  a  fight  under  very 
discouraging  circumstances  for  ten  years.  He 
had  special  qualities  for  his  task.  He  had  been 
a  lawyer  with  seven  years'  active  general  prac- 
tice before  entering  the  Church  where  he  had 
seven  years  of  successful  pastoral  work  pre- 
vious to  undertaking  his  special  campaign.  An 
able  organizer,  a  convincing  speaker,  a  man  of 
great  physical  strength  and  full  of  passionate 
devotion  to  his  cause,  he  faced  dark  days  cheer- 
fully. By  1903  his  work  had  led  to  the  or- 
ganization of  Anti- Saloon  Leagues  in  forty 
States  and  Territories. 

He  then  retired  as  chief  executive  of  the 
organization,  to  be  followed  by  Dr.  P.  A. 
Baker,  also  a  clergyman,  a  man  bred  in  pov- 
erty who  had  forced  his  way  to  the  front  rank 
by  sheer  executive  ability  and  tremendous  en- 
thusiasm. It  was  under  Dr.  Baker  that  the 
League  made  its  full  development.  With  him 
have  been  associated  men  like  Mr.  E.  H.  Cher- 
rington  who  controls  the  publicity  work  of 


134        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

the  Anti-Saloon  League  and  whose  activities 
are  felt  everywhere  in  America,  Mr.  W.  H. 
Anderson,  who  is  regarded  by  the  American 
liquor  interests  as  one  of  their  most  dangerous 
enemies,  Dr.  Dinwiddie  and  Mr.  W.  B. 
Wheeler.  When  these  men  entered  into  this 
campaign  the  brewing  and  whisky  interests, 
with  almost  limitless  funds  behind  them, 
seemed  in  secure  control  of  the  political  ma- 
chine. They  set  to  work,  educating,  organiz- 
ing, fighting.  A  tradition  is  already  beginning 
to  grow  up  around  them  and  their  methods. 
The  liquor  interests,  fighting  for  their  lives, 
spared  no  effort  to  defeat  them  by  the  vilest 
scandal,  by  expenditure  of  money  and  by,  when 
occasion  served,  the  organization  of  personal 
violence. 

The  first  fight  was  for  local  and  State  pro- 
hibition. In  1913  a  fresh  step  was  taken  when 
the  Anti-Saloon  League  launched  a  campaign 
for  national  prohibition  embodied  in  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States.  A  Committee 
of  one  thousand  from  the  Anti-Saloon  League, 
with  a  Committee  of  one  thousand  women  re- 
formers, marched  to  the  Capitol  at  Washing- 


NATIONAL  PROHIBITION        135 

ton  and  officially  presented  a  petition  tq  Con- 
gress, demanding  a  prohibition  amendment  to 
the  Federal  constitution. 

The  demand  seemed  to  many  at  the  time  a 
mere  extravagance  of  uncontrolled  and  irre- 
sponsible fanaticism.  These  folk  soon  discov- 
ered their  mistake.  State  after  State  in  the 
Union  and  province  after  province  in  Canada 
were  now  rapidly  going  "  dry."  In  1915, 
urged  and  aided  by  the  spirit  of  individual 
and  national  sacrifice  aroused  by  the  war,  a 
resolution  calling  for  the  submission  of  a  na- 
tional Prohibition  Amendment  to  the  Legis- 
latures of  the  several  States  was  carried  in 
Congress  by  the  necessary  two-thirds  majority. 
From  that  time  the  landslide  began  which 
ended  in  victory  four  years  later. 

To  this  campaign,  first  for  State  and  then 
for  national  prohibition,  Johnson  wholly  de- 
voted himself  from  1912  to  the  autumn  of 
1918.  It  was  a  time  of  great  battles.  There 
were  States  to  be  organized,  books  to  be  writ- 
ten, economic  and  political  studies  to  be  made, 
funds  to  be  raised.  The  business  interests  had 
to  be  convinced  that  prohibition  would  be 


136        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

good  for  them,  that  it  was  their  duty  to  sup- 
port it  with  all  their  force.  Churches  had  to 
be  kept  at  white  heat,  and  Legislatures  had 
to  be  watched. 

Johnson  and  his  friends  were  aided  by  the 
foolish  tactics  adopted  by  the  defenders  of  the 
drink  trade,  who  succeeded  in  arousing  against 
themselves  the  women,  the  reformers,  the 
churches,  a  large  part  of  the  manufacturing 
and  business  interests,  and  all  the  forces  mak- 
ing for  the  uplift  of  the  nation.  They 
despised  their  opponents,  and  even  when  pro- 
hibition was  sweeping  like  a  prairie  fire  over 
the  Union,  they  continued  to  assure  the  world 
that  the  thing  was  absurd,  that  it  could  never 
pass  into  law,  and  if  it  did  pass  into  law,  could 
never  be  enforced. 

Johnson  before  leaving  the  Indian  Service 
had  written  a  detailed  and  careful  study  of  the 
national  aspects  of  the  drink  question  under 
the  title,  "  The  Federal  Government  and  the 
Liquor  Traffic."  He  issued  other  volumes  and 
pamphlets  during  this  time.  One  of  the  most 
remarkable  and  attractive  of  these  was  on  the 
liquor  question  in  Russia,  written  during  the 


NATIONAL  PROHIBITION        137 

war.  To  obtain  the  facts  for  this  he  visited 
and  spent  some  time  in  Russia.  This  book 
contains  what  is  generally  admitted  to  be  the 
fullest  and  most  exact  account  of  the  vodka 
monopoly  to  be  found  in  the  English  language. 

His  activities  were  more  and  more  extend- 
ing outside  of  America.  He  visited  England 
to  study  the  situation  there;  he  went  to  the 
Continent  of  Europe  as  delegate  to  various 
conferences.  His  name  became  well-known  in 
temperance  circles  in  many  lands. 

In  the  summer  of  1918  he  and  his  colleagues 
looked  around  and  knew  that  the  battle,  so  far 
as  seeing  the  passage  of  national  prohibition  ir* 
the  United  States  was  concerned,  was  substan- 
tially won.  The  hour  had  come  for  the  next 
step  forward. 


IX 
LAUNCHING  THE  WORLD  CAMPAIGN 

IN  November,  1918,  a  new  step  forward 
was  taken  in  the  history  of  the  Prohibition 
movement,  when  the  Anti-Saloon  League 
of  America  resolved  to  launch  a  great  cam- 
paign to  make  the  world  "  dry."  A  great 
Conference  was  held  at  Columbus,  Ohio,  at- 
tended by  delegates  from  all  parts  of  the 
United  States  and  from  many  foreign  coun- 
tries. A  world-wide  program  was  there  fixed. 
It  was  decided  to  extend  the  movement  into 
other  countries  by  sending  speakers  and 
writers  abroad,  by  cultivating  publicity  and 
by  using  varied  means,  "to  establish  in  the 
minds  of  the  people  of  other  countries  the  facts 
as  to  the  benefit  and  successful  operation  of 
prohibition  in  the  United  States." 

The  Anti-Saloon  League  pledged  itself  to 
render  financial  assistance  to  temperance  or- 
138 


THE  WORLD  CAMPAIGN         139 

ganizations,  working  along  these  lines,  and  to 
help  to  create  fresh  organizations.  The  League 
further  proposed  to  take  up  with  similar  or- 
ganizations in  other  countries  the  importance 
of  international  action,  with  the  idea  of  calling 
for  a  Conference  "  for  the  purpose  of  organ- 
izing a  League  of  Nations  in  the  interests  of 
the  complete  extermination  of  the  beverage 
liquor  traffic  throughout  the  nations  of  the 
earth." 

Johnson  started  out  as  a  pioneer  in  the  world 
campaign  some  weeks  before  the  Columbus 
Conference  passed  its  resolutions.  In  the  sum- 
mer of  1918  he  was  invited  by  Mr.  W.  J. 
Allison,  Secretary  of  the  Scottish  Permissive 
Bill  Association,  to  cross  the  Atlantic  and  help 
in  a  coming  liquor  option  campaign  there.  A 
measure  had  been  passed  through  the  British 
Parliament,  giving  the  people  of  Scotland  the 
right  to  decide  by  ballot  whether  they  would 
have  prohibition  in  their  localities  or  not.  This 
was  a  radically  new  departure  in  British  legis- 
lation and  a  battle  had  been  maintained  for 
two  generations  before  the  right  had  been 
granted.  Even  now  the  powers  extend  only 


140        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

to  Scotland  and  not  to  the  rest  of  the  United 
Kingdom. 

Under  this  measure,  the  local  authorities 
were  required,  on  receipt  of  a  requisition 
signed  by  not  less  than  one-tenth  of  the  electors 
in  any  area,  to  cause  an  election  to  take  place, 
each  elector  being  given  the  choice  of  voting 
for  leaving  things  as  they  were,  for  reducing 
the  number  of  licensed  houses  by  one  quarter, 
or  for  prohibition.  Fifty-five  per  cent  of  the 
votes  must  be  recorded  in  favor  of  no  license 
in  order  to  carry  prohibition  and  these  must 
represent  not  less  than  thirty-five  per  cent  of 
the  electors  on  the  register.  The  first  election 
was  to  take  place  at  the  end  of  1920.  It  was 
now  up  to  the  prohibitionists  to  convince 
the  electors,  hence  the  appeal  for  Johnson's 
aid. 

At  first  he  refused,  but  after  a  conference 
with  his  friends  he  changed  his  decision. 

Johnson  arrived  in  Britain  on  September  13, 
1918.  He  first  traveled  over  Scotland  and  in- 
vestigated conditions  there.  He  sent  a  series 
of  reports  home  to  his  colleagues  in  America, 
and  they  thereupon  suggested  that  he  should 


THE  WORLD  CAMPAIGN         141 

go  to  London,  take  an  office  and  begin  work 
there.  He  found  admirable  headquarters  on 
the  first  floor  of  a  building  in  Fleet  Street,  in 
the  very  heart  of  newspaper  land. 

The  Englishman  by  tradition  and  instinct 
places  great  emphasis  on  the  liberty  of  the  sub- 
ject. He  absorbs  almost  from  infancy  an 
atmosphere  of  hostility  to  officialism  and  to 
regulations  which  prevent  him  from  doing 
what  he  likes  with  his  own. 

He  learns  in  youth  that  "  An  Englishman's 
home  is  his  castle."  "  If  any  policeman  or 
State  official  dared  to  try  to  invade  the  privacy 
of  my  home,"  said  an  outspoken  reformer,  Mr. 
W.  T.  Stead,  on  one  occasion,  with  passion, 
"  I  would  shoot  him  down  without  hesitation." 

The  war  with  Germany  had  for  the  time 
removed  the  individual  Englishman's  personal 
rights.  He  had  "  voluntarily  made  a  tempo- 
rary surrender  of  liberty  in  order  to  secure 
permanent  liberty  for  all  men."  But  the  results 
of  this  voluntary  surrender  made  the  English- 
man more  bitterly  hostile  to  officialism  than 
ever  before.  The  extravagances,  the  excesses 
and  the  absurdities  of  Government  service 


14-2        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

were  the  favorite  topic  of  conversation  wher- 
ever half  a  dozen  men  gathered  together. 

There  was  one  field  in  which  Government 
regulation  had,  without  question,  produced 
enormously  beneficial  results.  The  Govern- 
ment had,  as  a  war  measure,  instituted  the 
stricter  control  of  the  liquor  traffic,  closing  all 
public  houses  except  for  two  hours  and  a  half 
at  mid-day  and  for  three  hours  and  a  half  in 
the  evening,  forbidding  treating,  forbidding  the 
sale  of  spirits  in  bottles  from  Friday  afternoon 
until  Monday  morning  and  forbidding  the  sale 
of  drink  on  credit.  The  alcoholic  quantity  and 
strength  of  beers  and  of  spirits  had  been  con- 
siderably lowered,  and  the  price  had  been  very 
greatly  increased. 

As  a  result  of  all  this  the  convictions  for 
drunkenness  had  declined  by  over  seventy  per 
cent,  in  two  years,  and  all  diseases  and  crimes 
associated  with  drunkenness  had  shown  a  cor- 
responding decrease.  Cases  of  delirium  tre- 
mens  were  becoming  reduced  to  a  minimum, 
the  number  of  deaths  from  diseases  caused  by 
alcohol  sharply  dropped :  the  overlaying  of  in- 
fants, due  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  to  the 


THE  WORLD  CAMPAIGN         143 

accidental  smothering  of  babies  in  bed  by 
drunken  mothers,  had  been  reduced  by  over 
two-thirds. 

On  the  other  hand  the  brewers  and  distillers 
had  made  enormous  profits  during  the  war  and 
had  accumulated  greater  funds  than  ever  be- 
fore. The  public  in  its  impatience  of  control, 
was  ready  to  jump  at  any  relaxation  of  Gov- 
ernment regulations  about  anything,  including 
the  liquor  traffic.  The  Prime  Minister,  Mr. 
Lloyd  George,  was  individually  exceedingly 
sympathetic  to  temperance  reform,  and  was  an 
old  advocate  of  strict  regulation,  if  not  prohi- 
bition. But  the  leading  brewer  of  Scotland, 
Sir  George  Younger,  was  the  chief  Coalition 
Whip  and  it  was  evident  that  the  liquor  inter- 
ests had  such  powerful  friends  in  the  Coalition 
Cabinet  that  no  strong  action  by  the  Govern- 
ment supporting  temperance  could  be  ex- 
pected, for  a  time  at  least,  after  Peace  had 
come. 

Anyone  who  had  studied  the  situation  at  the 
beginning  of  July,  1919,  must  have  regarded 
the  outlook  as  almost  hopeless  from  the  pro- 
hibitionist point  of  view.  Then  in  a  day,  by 


144        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

a  single  newspaper  interview,  the  whole  aspect 
of  affairs  was  changed. 

A  member  of  the  staff  of  the  Daily  Mail, 
Mr.  Ferdinand  Tuohy,  heard  of  Mr.  John- 
son's campaign  and  went  to  see  him.  Next 
day  nearly  a  column  and  a  half  in  the  most 
prominent  position  in  the  Daily  Mail  was  given 
to  a  vividly  written  interview  with  the  "  Field 
Marshal  of  the  Prohibition  Forces  of  North 
America,  who  is  reputed  to  have  done  more 
to  make  the  United  States  '  dry '  than  any 
other  single  man." 

"  Mr.  '  Pussyfoot '  Johnson,"  said  the  writer, 
"  is  today  established  in  commodious  Fleet  Street 
offices.  He  is  a  stout,  heavy-featured,  be- 
spectacled man  with  the  gentlest,  almost  in- 
audible, pleasantly  modulated  voice.  He  first 
made  Oklahoma  '  dry ' — it  took  him  ten  years — 
then  Kansas,  then,  largely,  the  United  States. 
Now  he  has  come  over  here  to  make  this 
country  '  dry.' 

"  The  Anti-Saloon  League,  an  organization 
that  it  would  be  infantile  to  scoff  at,  has  sent 
its  best  man  to  this  country.  It  has  sent  him 
with  carte  blanche  in  strategy,  tactics  and 
finance.  The  others  are  coming,  *  large  numbers 
of  men  and  women  experts,  including  Mr. 


THE  WORLD  CAMPAIGN         145 

Bryan  ' ;  meanwhile  Mr.  '  Pussyfoot '  Johnson  is 
inaudibly,  invisibly  clearing  the  field  for  action." 

What,  however,  particularly  startled  the 
British  public  was  a  statement,  based  on  a 
misunderstanding  of  what  Johnson  had  said, 
that  the  Anti-Saloon  League  was  going  to 
take  active  part  in  the  British  Elections.  John- 
son had  been  telling  of  what  they  did  in  Amer- 
ica and  of  what  might  happen  in  England. 
His  interviewer  understood  him  to  say  that 
this  was  what  the  Anti-Saloon  League  would 
do: 

"  Your  British  organizations  have  been  at  us 
for  over  a  year  to  come  over  here.  The  whole 
thing  has  been  in  response  to  their  asking. 
We're  going  to  teach  them  how  to  get  this  coun- 
try dry.  I've  reported  to  my  headquarters  that 
the  position  here  is  entirely  different  from  that 
back  home,  but  that  is  far  from  being  as  hope- 
less as  appears  on  the  surface.  Our  workers 
who  come  over  here — field  representatives — are 
all  going  to  be  paid  by  us — $300  (£60)  a  month 
and  upwards. 

"  The  United  Kingdom  Alliance  may,  of 
course,  pay  their  expenses  when  they  speak  at 
their  meetings,  but  we'll  pay  their  expenses  as 
well.  Our  steady  income  at  home  is  about  £300,- 


146        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

ooo  a  year,  though,  of  course,  we  have  good  capi- 
tal besides.  We  have  500,000  regular  subscribers 
and  500,000  irregular  ones.  We  don't  particu- 
larly search  for  wealthy  men." 

"  Are  you  going  to  butt  in  on  our  elections  ?  " 
"  Why,  yes.  Our  intelligence  service  will  keep 
us  informed  as  to  when  a  district  is  possible, 
and  down  we'll  send  our  campaigners.  We'll  bill 
the  place  and  buy  space  in  the  local  newspapers 
and  show  films  at  the  kinemas,  and  give  ad- 
dresses. Why,  we're  over  here  to  get  behind 
all  your  organizations  and  press  the  matter 
home." 

The  average  Englishman  after  reading  this 
interview  was  convinced  that  the  Americans 
were  sending  an  army  of  spell-binders  across 
the  Atlantic  to  sweep  the  country,  with  enor- 
mous funds  behind  them,  and  that  they  were 
going  to  enter  into  a  great  campaign,  obtain 
control  over  the  newspapers,  subsidize  kinemas, 
and  flood  the  country  with  printed  matter. 
The  interview  created  an  enormous  sensation. 
There  was  no  more  question  of  the  temperance 
movement  being  in  a  rut.  It  had  been  lifted 
out  of  the  rut  at  a  bound. 

Johnson,  by  the  time  the  interview  had  been 
published,  had  gone  to  Finland  to  assist  in 


THE  WORLD  CAMPAIGN         147 

helping  to  celebrate  the  coming  of  prohibition 
there.  He  first  learned  of  the  sensation  the 
interview  was  causing  from  the  Scandinavian 
and  the  Finnish  press.  He  purposely  remained 
away  from  England  for  some  weeks  to  give 
the  situation  time  to  cool  down. 

The  general  reception  given  to  the  interview 
was  exceedingly  hostile.  There  were  furious 
protests  everywhere,  and  even  leading  British 
temperance  organizers  expressed  their  doubts 
and  hesitations  as  to  the  possibilities  of  a  for- 
ward movement.  The  brewers  and  distillers 
came  together  and  established  organizations  to 
fight  the  new  prohibition  campaign.  An  Anti- 
Prohibition  League  was  established,  and  the 
retail  trade,  the  brewers  and  distillers  all  en- 
tered into  special  movements  of  their  own 
against  this  new  menace. 

When  after  an  absence  of  five  weeks  John- 
son returned  to  England,  his  office  was  be- 
sieged by  newspaper  men  seeking  statements. 
"  I  understand  that  you  have  been  having  a 
sort  of  Sioux  Indian  ghost  dance  over  my  af- 
fairs and  the  affairs  of  the  Anti-Saloon  League 
in  America,"  he  said. 


148        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

"  What  I  have  been  doing,  and  what  I  expect 
to  do  in  the  future,"  he  told  a  representative  of 
the  Manchester  Guardian,  "  is  merely  to  explain 
the  American  action  against  drink. 

"  Neither  I,  myself,  nor  the  Anti-Saloon 
League  has  had  the  slightest  intention  of  inter- 
fering in  any  way  with  British  affairs.  We  will 
not  take  any  part  whatever  in  any  British  elec- 
tions. I  am  under  the  most  positive  instructions 
not  to  interfere  in  any  way  with  such  things: 
I  have  not  discussed  British  affairs  in  Britain, 
and  will  not  in  the  future.  What  I  have  been 
doing  and  what  I  expect  to  do  in  the  future  is 
merely  to  explain  the  American  action  against 
the  drink,  tell  why  and  how  we  did  it,  and  the 
result  of  this  action.  The  British  people  are 
under  no  obligation  to  adopt  the  same  policy 
unless  they  choose  to  do  so. 

"All  this  is  in  the  direction  of  promoting 
friendly  relations  between  the  two  countries 
along  the  line  of  the  work  of  the  English-speak- 
ing Union,  of  which  I  am  a  member,  and  of 
which  Mr.  William  H.  Taft,  and  Mr.  Arthur  J. 
Balfour  are  the  presidents.  America  and  Eng- 
land are  arranging  an  interchange  of  college  pro- 
fessorships and  interchange  of  clergymen,  and 
why  not  an  interchange  in  other  things  which 
will  help  to  make  each  side  understand  the  view- 
points and  ambitions  of  the  other. 

"  We  sent  a  couple  of  million  soldiers  over  to 
France  to  work  side  by  side  with  the  sons  of 
Britain.  That  helps  us  to  understand  each  other. 


THE  WORLD  CAMPAIGN         149 

Before  America  entered  the  war  the  British 
publicists  flooded  America  with  literature  explain- 
ing the  British  purpose  in  the  war,  and  seeking 
American  aid.  The  British  Government  even 
opened  a  publicity  headquarters  on  Fifth  Ave- 
nue, New  York,  in  charge  of  a  capable  publicity 
man,  Mr.  Geoffrey  Butler,  seeking  to  enlist 
American  sympathies  for  the  Allied  cause.  No 
loyal  American  objected  to  that.  We  welcomed 
it  all  and  only  wish  that  it  had  been  done  on  a 
larger  scale  so  that  we  would  have  seen  our  duty 
sooner  and  got  into  the  conflict  sooner. 

"  During  the  past  few  weeks,  according  to 
your  own  newspapers,  British  bondholders  in 
brewery  stocks  and  bonds  have  sent  large  sums 
of  money  to  America  to  fight  the  enforcement  of 
our  National  Prohibition  Program.  According 
to  American  newspapers  this  money  has  been 
used  in  part  in  employing  Mr.  Samuel  Unter- 
meyer,  of  New  York,  one  of  the  best  American 
lawyers,  to  fight  against  Prohibition  in  the 
courts.  Mr.  Untermeyer  himself  announces  that 
he  has  been  so  employed.  No  loyal  American 
objects  to  this.  We  will  help  British  shareholders 
to  spend  the  money.  The  fact  that  British  capi- 
talists got  stung  by  investing  their  gold  in  Ger- 
man breweries  in  America  is  no  concern  of  ours. 

"  All  this  interchange  of  discussion  helps  •  to 
promote  a  community  of  help  and  a  community 
of  interest  among  English-speaking  people.  I 
came  over  here  at  the  urgent  and  repeated  invi- 
tation of  the  dry  organizations  of  Great  Britain 


150        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

to  tell  the  story  of  prohibition  in  America,  and 
to  counteract  some  of  the  grotesque  yarns  that 
are  being  circulated  on  this  side  of  the  water 
about  the  effects  of  the  dry  policy  in  America. 
Those  who  wish  to  listen  ought  to  have  the 
British  right  to  do  so :  those  who  do  not  wish  to 
listen  can  have  the  British  right  to  stop  their 
ears  or  make  whatever  comment  they  please. 
Then  the  British  public  will  likely  exercise  the 
good  old  British  right  to  do  whatever  they 
please  about  it." 


But  the  British  public  had  received  an  im- 
pression which  no  explanation  could  remove. 
The  country  was  quickly  flooded  with  litera- 
ture, not  prohibition  literature,  but  anti-pro- 
hibition. One  cartoon  which  was  displayed 
in  most  of  the  public  houses  in  the  country 
showed  the  figure  of  a  long-nosed  individual 
whose  nasal  extremity  stretched  from  the 
United  States  into  the  private  premises  of 
John  Bull  in  England.  "  Pussyfoot  Nosey 
Parker  from  across  the  sea,"  it  was  headed. 
"  Dollars  for  Dirty  Work  in  England.  Shall 
he  Pro-boss-us  ?  " 

Leaflets  were  issued  widely,  urging  the  pub- 
lic to  "  send  the  alien  agitators  home."  Meet- 


THE  WORLD  CAMPAIGN         151 

ings  called  by  the  temperance  supporters  in 
many  parts  of  the  country  were  broken  up. 
The  name  of  "  Pussyfoot "  was  in  everyone's 
mouth.  It  was  introduced  in  the  music  halls 
and  theaters,  and  the  writers  of  pantomine 
songs  made  ready  to  exploit  him  to  the  full. 
"  Pussyfoot "  bade  fair  to  become  the  bogey 
of  England. 


HOW  "PUSSYFOOT"  LOST  HIS  EYE 

yi  MONG  the  numerous  invitations  which 
/"\    Johnson  received  to  address  all  kinds 
of  assemblies  in  Britain  was  one  from 
Major  Evelyn  Wrench  of  the  Overseas  Club, 
asking  him  to  take  part  in  a  debate  on  the 
"  How  and  Why  of  American  Prohibition." 
Mr.  Johnson  assented  and  November  12,  1919, 
was  fixed  as  the  date.    Mr.  R.  Mitchell  Banks, 
a  barrister,  representing  the  anti-prohibition- 
ists, was  to  speak  on  the  other  side. 

The  Overseas  Club  is  an  active  British  Im- 
perial organization  with  a  large  number  of 
members  scattered  throughout  the  world.  It 
has  club  rooms  in  Kingsway,  London,  close 
to  the  Law  Courts,  and  regular  afternoon  lec- 
tures and  debates  are  usually  held  in  these 
rooms.  So  many  applications  came,  however, 
for  tickets,  for  the  Prohibition  debate  that  the 
152 


HOW  HE  LOST  HIS  EYE        153 

club  rooms  were  too  small  and  Essex  Hall  in 
Essex  Street  nearby  was  taken. 

About  this  time  the  students  of  the  Univer- 
sity of  London  took  it  into  their  heads  to  dem- 
onstrate to  the  world  that  London  is  really  a 
University  city.  On  the  Monday  of  the  second 
week  in  November  two  groups  of  University 
students  from  University  College  and  St. 
Bartholomew's  Hospital  had  engaged  in  a 
pitched  battle  in  the  grounds  of  University 
College  over  the  possession  of  a  gun  valued 
by  both  of  them  as  a  relic.  On  Tuesday  they 
had  marched  down  into  Fleet  Street  and  dem- 
onstrated in  front  of  a  newspaper  office  as  a 
protest  against  some  criticisms  passed  on  them. 

The  Prohibition  debate  was  to  be  on 
Wednesday.  All  the  students,  from  King's 
College  and  University  College,  and  from  the 
hospital  schools,  resolved  to  come  together  to 
rag  "  Pussyfoot "  Johnson.  There  was  no  in- 
tention to  injure  him.  Word  was  passed  round 
by  the  organizers  that  no  real  damage  was  to 
be  done.  If  he  was  pelted  it  was  to  be  with 
little  bags  of  flour  and  nothing  harder. 

Essex  Street  is  a  narrow  thoroughfare  run- 


154        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

ning  from  the  eastern  end  of  the  Strand  to- 
wards the  River  Thames.  The  organizers  of 
the  meeting  knew  nothing  of  what  was  being 
planned.  The  newspapers,  however,  were 
better  informed  and  shortly  before  4  o'clock 
on  the  afternoon  of  the  meeting,  flashlight 
photographers  mounted  various  points  of  van- 
tage around  Essex  Street  and  took  possession 
of  windows  opposite  the  entrance  to  the  hall. 
Company  after  company  of  students  marched 
in  military  formation  for  the  one  point.  The 
first  section  rushed  the  door  keepers  and  oc- 
cupied the  greater  part  of  the  seats  in  the  hall. 
A  great  host  waited  outside  with  banners  and 
beer  bottles  to  seize  "  Pussyfoot "  on  arrival. 
Every  taxicab  approaching  the  place  was 
searched.  Johnson,  however,  quietly  walked 
through  the  crowd  into  the  hall,  no  one  recog- 
nizing him.  A  few  policemen  were  on  the 
scene  and  later  on  the  iron  gates  of  the  hall 
were  shut. 

Long  before  the  meeting  started  the  stu- 
dents within  and  without  were  shouting: 

"  Pussyfoot,  Pussyfoot,  we  want  Pussyfoot. 
Bart's  wants  Pussyfoot; 


HOW  HE  LOST  HIS  EYE         155 

Guy's  wants  Pussyfoot; 
We  all  want  Pussyfoot. 
Pussyfoot ! " 

As  the  Chairman  and  the  two  speakers 
mounted  the  platform,  they  were  greeted  with 
wild  shouts  and  cat-calls.  The  Chairman  ap- 
pealed and  called  upon  the  interrupters  to  be 
sportsmen  and  give  the  speakers  a  fair  hearing. 
He  might  as  well  have  spoken  to  the  winds. 
Major  Wrench  appealed  for  fair  play,  mention- 
ing that  the  Overseas  Club  had  collected 
£1,000,000  for  the  war  and  had  presented  the 
Government  with  three  hundred  aeroplanes. 
"  As  Britishers,  as  I  understand  most  of  you 
are,  I  ask  you  to  give  our  guests  a  fair  hear- 
ing." He  was  shouted  down.  "  I  have  as 
much  time  to  spare  as  you  have,"  said  the 
Chairman.  "  And  I  am  prepared  to  wait 
here  all  night,  if  necessary,  until  you  are  will- 
ing to  listen."  Mr.  Johnson  intimated  that  he 
was  willing  to  wait  also. 

"We  want  Pussyfoot,"  came  the  chorus  in 
reply.  Then  the  Chairman  offered  to  allow  a 
representative  of  the  students  to  state  their 
case  from  the  platform.  One  of  them,  dis- 


156        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

guised  as  a  stage  Irishman,  promptly  came  up 
from  the  back  and  was  enthusiastically 
greeted. 

"We  say  that  if  Britain  wants  to  be  wet 
or  dry,"  he  declared  amid  tumultuous  cheers, 
"  that  is  a  thing  for  Britishers  alone  to  decide. 
We  don't  want  Americans  coming  over  here 
with  elaborate  and  ornate  speeches,  telling  us 
what  we  ought  to  do.  We  won  the  Battle  of 
the  Somme  on  rum,  and  rum  only,  and  the 
sooner  Mr.  Johnson  realizes  that  the  better." 

Several  newspaper  photographers  who  had 
taken  possession  of  the  little  gallery  to  the  rear 
of  the  hall  were  busy  receiving  flashlight  pic- 
tures and  the  flashes  added  a  weird  touch  to 
the  extraordinary  scene. 

Mr.  Banks,  the  anti-Prohibitionist,  now 
made  a  strong  appeal  for  fair  play  for  his  op- 
ponent. Then  Johnson  himself  mounted  the 
platform,  quiet,  smiling  and  looking,  as  the 
reporters  next  day  said,  as  cherubic  as  Mr. 
Pickwick.  The  tumult  had  left  him  quite 
unruffled. 

He  started  by  declaring  that  he  quite  sym- 
pathized with  the  views  of  those  people  who 


HOW  HE  LOST  HIS  EYE         157 

said  that  it  was  for  Britishers  alone  to  decide 
if  Britain  wanted  to  be  wet  or  dry.  "  I  came 
to  this  country  not  on  my  own  initiative,  but 
on  the  invitation  and  partly  at  the  expense  of 
a  body  of  British  people.  I  claim  for  the  Brit- 
ish the  right  to  invite  anybody  into  their  homes 
that  they  think  fit  and  if  this  right  is  denied 
them,  then  this  country  is  false  to  its  tradi- 
tions." 

Amid  yells  and  songs  a  party  of  students 
rose  from  their  seats  as  though  going  out. 
Then  at  an  arranged  signal,  one  section  opened 
a  barrage  of  bags  of  flour  on  the  platform  and 
another  section  rushed  up.  Picked  men  had 
been  allotted  to  the  task  of  seizing  "  Pussy- 
foot "  and  his  Chairman. 

Chairs  were  smashed,,  tables  overturned. 
Johnson,  getting  his  back  to  the  wall,  put  up  a 
first-class  fight  and  with  hands  and  knees 
tried  to  keep  his  opponents  back.  A  clergy- 
man rushed  to  his  assistance  and  the  two  to- 
gether made  it  very  lively  for  a  brief  space  of 
time  for  the  army  of  lusty  youths  around  them. 
Then  Johnson  was  momentarily  blinded  by 
little  bags  of  flour  bursting  in  his  face  and  he 


158        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

was  seized  and  borne  out  triumphantly.  The 
Chairman  had  already  been  knocked  down  a 
couple  of  times  while  trying  to  reach  "  Pussy- 
foot's "  side  and  he  too  was  seized  and  borne 
into  the  street. 

The  kidnapping  occurred  so  quickly  that  it 
was  impossible  for  the  ordinary  members  of 
the  audience  to  do  anything  to  prevent  it. 
Most  of  the  audience,  apart  from  the  students, 
were  ladies. 

"  The  situation  in  the  body  of  the  hall,"  said 
one  paper  next  day,  "  was  at  one  time  dis- 
tinctly dangerous.  Chairs  were  overthrown 
and  broken  and  women  who  were  roughly 
pushed  aside  screamed  for  mercy.  One  of 
them,  turning  boldly  around  and  facing  the 
mob,  shouted  defiantly,  '  You  scoundrels ! 
You  cowards !  I  wish  I  were  a  man ;  I  would 
soon  show  you  what  I  would  do  with  you.' ' 

After  the  tumult  had  died  down  Mr. 
Mitchell  Banks  returned  to  the  platform  and 
said,  "  I  hope  you  will  take  my  word  of  honor 
that  I  know  nothing  of  this  disgraceful  scene. 
I  repudiate  it.  I  propose  to  you  that  we  pass 
a  vote  of  condolence  with  Mr.  Johnson  on  the 


HOW  HE  LOST  HIS  EYE        159 

unfair  and  rough  treatment  he  has  received." 
Essex  Street  and  the  Strand  facing  it  were 
now  packed  with  an  army  of  close  on  two 
thousand  students.  Some  had  commandeered 
a  newspaper  cart  and  had  taken  the  horse  out 
of  the  shafts.  The  Chairman  was  carried  into 
this,  the  police  vainly  trying  to  rescue  him. 
Then  he  was  dragged  off  to  King's  College 
near  by,  the  top  of  the  covered  cart  being 
smashed  in  by  crowds  of  young  fellows 
around.  Johnson  was  borne  by  another  route 
and  the  two  were  carried  into  the  yard  of 
King's  College  amid  triumphant  yells  of 
"  Pussyfoot,  Pussyfoot,  we've  got  Pussy- 
foot." 

The  wilder  spirits  demanded  that  Pussy- 
foot and  his  companions  should  be  ducked  in 
the  Thames  or  in  the  fountains  at  Trafalgar 
Square,  but  the  leaders  of  the  "  rag  "  had  the 
matter  well  in  hand.  They  wanted  a  "  rag," 
not  a  tragedy. 

Johnson  was  carried  along  to  King's  Col- 
lege and  offered  beer,  which  he,  of  course, 
refused  to  drink.  Speeches  were  demanded, 
but  there  was  too  much  noise  for  any  except 


160        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

those  in  the  immediate  circle  around  to  hear 
what  Johnson  and  his  companion  had  to  say. 
The  Prohibition  leader  realizing  now  that  the 
thing  was  no  more  than  a  "  rag,"  entered  good- 
humoredly  into  the  spirit  of  the  proceedings. 
Another  enormous  procession  was  formed. 
Johnson  was  placed  on  a  stretcher,  his  Chair- 
man behind  him  in  a  cart  drawn  by  a  number 
of  lads,  and  all  set  out  in  slow  march  through 
the  West  End  of  London,  up  the  Strand, 
around  Charing  Cross  Road,  through  Leicester 
Square  and  Piccadilly  Circus,  and  up  Regent 
Street.  Some  of  the  students  bore  banners. 
One  of  these  bore  the  inscription : 

"  Pussyfoot,  Pussyfoot,  why  are  we  here  ? 
We've  come  to  prevent  you  from  stopping  our 

beer. 

Pussyfoot,  Pussyfoot,  there'll  be  a  big  riot. 
We  drink  in  pubs,  but  you  on  the  quiet." 

The  streets  were  lined  with  thousands  of 
people.  The  police  having  vainly  attempted 
rescues,  marched  alongside  of  the  procession. 
Chorus  after  chorus  was  sung,  rival  sections 
of  the  students  singing  against  each  other. 


HOW  HE  LOST  HIS  EYE         161 

"What  won  the  war?"  one  man  would 
thunder. 

"  Beer,"  the  chorus  would  answer  amidst 
tumultuous  cheers. 

College  poets  had  written  their  rhymes  for 
the  occasion.  Some  of  them  were  very  halt- 
ing, such  as : 

"  We  don't  want  beer  and  whisky, 
We  don't  want  gin  and  bitters. 
All  we  want  is  frisky 
Pussyfoot." 

But  the  favorite  chorus  kept  up  nearly  the 
whole  time  was : 

"  Pussyfoot,  Pussyfoot,  we've  got  Pussyfoot. 
Guy's  have  Pussyfoot; 
Bart's  have  Pussyfoot; 
We've  all  got  Pussyfoot. 
Pussyfoot." 

Meanwhile  Johnson,  his  clothing  covered 
with  flour,  sat  smiling  on  his  stretcher.  His 
hat  had  gone;  one  of  the  students  offered  him 
his.  Another  student  offered  the  Chairman, 
who  was  securely  guarded  on  his  cart,  whose 


162        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

shirt  was  ripped  open,  and  whose  tie  had  dis- 
appeared in  the  struggle,  an  overcoat  to  keep 
him  warm,  for  it  was  a  cold  autumn  evening. 

The  procession  reached  Portland  Street  at  a 
point  near  where  Oxford  Street  and  Regent 
Street  meet.  Police  reserves  had  been  called 
for  and  arrived  on  the  scene.  They  maneuv- 
ered in  such  fashion  that  they  cut  off  the  sec- 
tion with  Johnson  from  the  rest  of  the  pro- 
cession. Then  they  made  a  rush  and  bore  him 
away  from  his  captors.  A  motor  car  was 
near  by  and  they  hurried  him  into  it. 

Up  to  now  the  affair  had  been  nothing  more 
than  a  "  rag."  At  the  last  moment  it  took  a 
more  serious  turn.  Someone  on  the  outside 
of  the  crowd — the  students  declare  that  it  was 
none  of  them — threw  a  stone  which  caught 
Johnson  full  on  the  ball  of  his  right  eye.  The 
police  took  him  quickly  off  to  Bow  Street 
Station  where  a  surgeon,  Dr.  Thomas  Rose, 
attended  to  his  injury.  The  pain  was  intense 
and  it  was  evident  that  the  damage  was  seri- 
ous, but  owing  to  the  suffusion  of  blood  it  was 
impossible  to  tell  its  full  extent.  Johnson  went 
on  to  his  home  with  heavily  bandaged  eye. 


HOW  HE  LOST  HIS  EYE         163 

The  reporters  sought  him  out.  They  found 
him  smiling,  despite  the  pain  of  his  bandaged 
eye.  '  Tell  the  boys  there  is  no  ill-will  on  my 
side,"  he  said,  "  not  a  grain." 


XI 


THE  "BOGEY  MAN"  BECOMES  A 
POPULAR  HERO 

THE  Englishman  loves  a  "good  sport." 
By  a  "  good  sport "  he  understands  a 
man  who  plays  the  game,  who  can  take 
punishment  without  whimpering  and  who  goes 
through  hard  times  with  a  smile. 

When  the  news  was  published  that  John- 
son's eye  had  been  badly  injured  in  the  strug- 
gle on  the  Thursday  afternoon  and  that  he  had 
made  light  of  it  and  sent  a  message  of  good 
cheer  to  the  students  who  ragged  him,  there 
was  a  tremendous  reaction  in  his  favor,  shared 
by  every  class  of  the  community.  The  stu- 
dents themselves  wrote  a  letter  of  sympathy 
and  sent  a  deputation  to  visit  Johnson  in  his 
home  and  to  express  their  sorrow.  "  It  was 
not  one  of  us  who  threw  the  missile,"  they 
said.  "  There  was  a  distinct  order  given  from 
164 


(C)  Daily  Mail 


The   Morning  after  "  The  Rag ' 


"BOGEY  MAN"  BECOMES  A  HERO  165 

the  first  that  no  sticks  or  other  weapons  were 
to  be  used,  and  that  there  was  to  be  no  '  rough- 
house.'  " 

Expressions  of  sympathy  were  heard  as 
freely  in  public  house  bars  and  hotel  saloons  as 
anywhere  else.  The  Chairman  of  the  Wine 
&  Spirit  Trade  Defense  Fund  sent  a  letter 
expressing  sincere  regret  at  his  treatment. 
"  Your  campaign  to  secure  prohibition  in 
Great  Britain  will  be  strenuously  opposed  by 
British  methods,  but  we  entirely  deprecate 
anything  which  is  not  fair  play." 

Johnson  was  removed  on  the  following  day 
to  a  nursing  home.  "  Tell  everybody  that  it 
is  not  serious  and  that  I  had  a  good  time,"  he 
said.  "  It  is  only  this  little  eye  trouble  which 
is  the  fly  in  the  ointment.  I  have  nothing 
against  the  boys.  They  are  all  right,  and  I 
hope  to  meet  them  again  soon  when  I  will  give 
them  the  interrupted  address." 

A  portrait  of  him  sitting  up  in  bed  smiling, 
with  bandaged  eye,  which  appeared  in  many 
newspapers,  helped  still  more  to  turn  the  cur- 
rent of  popular  sympathy  in  his  favor.  "  Any- 
one who  could  smile  like  that  under  the  cir- 


166        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

cumstances  must  be  a  real  good  sort,"  said  men 
to  one  another. 

"Don't  let  the  boys  think  that  I  am  a 
martyr,"  he  told  a  correspondent.  "  I'm  not. 
I  am  fifty-seven,  but  last  night  the  boys  made 
me  feel  twenty  years  younger.  I  am  feeling 
today  a  bit  stiff,  and  the  eye  gave  me  a  bad 
night,  but  the  only  thing  that  really  bothers 
me  is  that  the  doctors  won't  let  me  read  the 
story  of  the  '  rag '  in  the  papers." 

The  King  made  inquiries  about  Johnson's 
progress,  and  made  no  secret  of  his  feelings 
over  the  matter.  The  students  had  rather  a 
surprise  when  on  the  Friday  evening  Lord 
Birkenhead,  Lord  Chancellor  of  England,  took 
opportunity  when  speaking  at  the  Connaught 
Rooms  in  London,  to  condemn  the  "  rag  "  in 
severe  language.  "  I  speak  with  all  sincerity," 
he  declared,  "  when  I  say  that  I  profoundly 
regret  the  incident  in  which  a  citizen  of  the 
United  States  was  concerned.  Mr.  Johnson 
holds  views  which  I  do  not  happen  to  hold. 
He  was  invited  here  by  associations  of  Eng- 
lish people  who  shared  his  views.  He  was 
entitled  to  express  his  opinion  in  this  country 


"  BOGEY  MAN  "  BECOMES  A  HERO     167 

just  as  freely  as  I  would  be  entitled  to  do  if 
I  were  invited  by  American  Associations  to 
express  my  opinion  in  that  country.  Making 
every  allowance  for  the  high  spirits  of  youth, 
I  profoundly  regret  that  a  citizen  of  the  United 
States  should  have  been  subjected  to  such  an 
outrage.  I  do  not  know  that  anybody  would 
be  advised  to  treat  with  levity  and  flippancy 
what  has  happened." 

The  public  encouraged  by  Johnson's  cheer- 
ful words  were  not  inclined  to  take  the  damage 
to  his  eye  seriously.  It  was  impossible  at  first 
to  tell  what  damage  was  done  owing  to  suf- 
fusion of  blood.  After  a  few  days  word  came 
that  the  eye  was  worse.  It  was  feared  that 
the  optic  lens  had  been  broken.  Then  the 
bulletins  stated  that  Johnson  was  in  great  pain 
and  that  there  was  little  hope  of  saving  the 
eye. 

A  fortnight  after  the  "  rag  "  it  was  found 
necessary  to  remove  the  eye.  "  We  found  in 
consultation,"  said  Mr.  Harold  Grimsdale, 
"that  it  was  impossible  to  save  a  useful  eye; 
so  in  view  of  the  pain  which  could  not  be 
relieved,  we  found  it  necessary  to  remove  it." 


168        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

The  London  Evening  News  promptly 
started  a  popular  subscription  as  a  mark  of 
public  sympathy.  Johnson  was  in  no  state  to 
be  told  anything  when  the  subscription  was 
opened,  but  when  he  learned  of  it  he  found 
himself  in  a  somewhat  awkward  position.  He 
fully  appreciated  the  kind  intentions  that  lay 
behind  the  proposal,  but  he  was  anxious  not  to 
do  anything  that  might  make  it  appear  that  he 
was  trying  to  exploit  the  accident  for  his  own 
benefit.  He  asked  that  the  money  which  had 
been  subscribed  should  not  be  given  to  him  but 
should  be  devoted  to  Sir  Arthur  Pearson's 
great  work  for  blinded  soldiers  at  St.  Dun- 
stan's  House  in  London.  This  was  done. 

The  reformer's  letter  bag  at  this  time  bore 
striking  evidence  of  the  wave  of  feeling  in  his 
favor.  Messages  of  sympathy  came  in  from 
all  parts  of  the  country  and  from  many  parts 
of  the  world.  Societies  of  all  kinds  met  and 
formally  expressed  their  disapproval  and  re- 
gret over  what  had  happened.  Non-prohibi- 
tionists wrote  cordial  letters  telling  Johnson 
that  while  they  did  not  like  his  doctrines,  they 
admired  him.  Here  is  a  typical  letter : — 


"  BOGEY  MAN  "  BECOMES  A  HERO     169 

45  Queen's  Gate, 

London,  S.W./. 
Good  Old  Pussyfoot, 

I  don't  agree  with  your  opinions,  but  no  one 
can  deny  you're  the  greatest  sport  living.  I  am 
just  about  to  drink  your  health,  and  not  in  water 
either!!  Here's  wishing  you  the  very  best  of 
luck,  and  every  success  in  your  campaign. 
Yours  in  sport, 

(Sgd)  ARNOLD  L.  HASKELL. 

The  editorial  staff  of  the  King's  College 
Review  wrote : 

King's  College, 

(University  of  London) 

Strand,  London,  W.C. 
Dear  Sir, 

We  are  sorry  to  hear  of  the  accident  which 
happened  to  you  last  night  and  trust  that  it  may 
not  prove  serious. 

We  are  also  sorry  that  your  speech  from  the 
balcony  at  the  College  was  not  given  a  fair  hear- 
ing. Therefore  we  are  writing  to  ask  if  you  will 
send  a  letter  to  the  students  of  King's  College 
through  the  medium  of  the  official  magazine, 
"K.  C.  Review"? 

We  are  just  going  to  press  and  your  letter 
could  be  included  in  this  number.  This  would 
enable  you  to  get  a  fair  "  hearing  "  from  every 
one  of  the  students  which,  unfortunately,  you 


170        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

were  not  accorded  last  night  when  in  the  college 
precincts. 
We  are,  Sir, 
Yours  truly, 

(Sgd)  C.  H.  DRIVER,  Editor. 

MAY  G.  MINNS  (Sub  Editor), 
"       REG.  HATTON  (Business  Editor). 

The  message  which  Johnson  looked  at  first, 
however,  was  a  cable  from  his  wife  away  in 
Ohio: 

Westerville. 
Antisalleg  London. 

Keep  courage  Will  come  right  Am  praying 
for  you  With  love 

LILLIAN  JOHNSON. 

The  Minister  for  Education,  the  Rt.  Hon. 
H.  A.  L.  Fisher,  sent  a  cordial  letter  express- 
ing his  regret  at  the  occurrence. 

The  Commissioner  of  Police  of  the 
Metropolis  sent  a  message  to  the  American 
Consul-General  : 

"  The  Commissioner  desires  me  to  assure  you 
that  there  were  no  steps  that  he  would  not  have 
taken  to  prevent  this  deplorable  incident,  had  it 
been  possible  to  have  foreseen  it,  and  he  wishes 
me  to  express  his  personal  regret,  which  he  hopes 
you  will  convey  to  Mr.  Johnson." 


"BOGEY  MAN"  BECOMES  A  HERO  171 

Here  is  a  letter  from  the  famous  Admiral, 
Sir  G.  King-Hall : 

7  Albany  Villas,  Hove, 

I7th  November,  1919. 
Dear  Mr.  Johnson, 

I  send  you  my  sincerest  sympathy  on  the  das- 
tardly outrage  that  you  have  been  the  victim  of, 
so  foreign  to  all  gentlemanly  and  chivalrous  feel- 
ing, and  as  an  Englishman  cannot  understand 
the  childish  and  ungenerous  conduct  of  young 
men  in  having  treated  you  thus. 

I  am  a  lifelong  T.  A.  and  President  of  the 
Royal  Naval  Temperance  Society,  consisting  of 
some  50,000  members,  and  thank  you  for  having 
come  over  to  show  what  an  advantage  T.  A.  in 
America  has  been  in  the  cause  of  efficiency. 

I  sincerely  trust  your  eye  may  not  be  per- 
manently hurt,  and  as  a  British  officer,  apologize 
for  the  unwarrantable  conduct  of  a  small  num- 
ber of  my  young  countrymen,  for  having  for- 
gotten the  rules  of  hospitality  to  a  stranger. 
Yours  sincerely, 

A.  KING-HALL. 


His  old  friends  of  the  Anti-Saloon  League 
sent  him  long  messages  and  the  Executive 
Committees  of  the  League  passed  a  resolution 
on  the  matter  on  January  19,  1920.  Two  of 


172        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

the  letters  are  specially  worth  producing.  The 
first  comes  from  Mr.  E.  H.  Cherrington,  one 
of  the  foremost  figures  in  the  League.  He 
wrote : 


"  Your  eyes  have  been  of  great  service  to  the 
cause  of  righteousness  in  general  and  the  pro- 
hibition movement  in  particular,  and  yet  I  am 
fully  persuaded  that  all  the  great  service  which 
both  your  eyes  have  rendered  in  the  years  gone 
by  is  not  to  be  compared  with  the  remarkable 
service  which  you  have  rendered  in  the  loss  of 
one  of  them. 

"  In  fact,  you  have  gone  Samson  one  better, 
for  you  still  have  one  eye,  and  from  aH  evidence 
there  are  other  assets  still  remaining. 

"  I  want  to  congratulate  you,  first  of  all,  on 
the  faithful,  persistent,  determined  and  success- 
ful effort  which  you  have  made  since  you  have 
been  in  England  to  properly  represent  the  Anti- 
Saloon  League  movement  in  America. 

"  I  want  to  congratulate  you,  in  the  second 
place,  on  standing  your  ground  to  the  point  of 
physical  exhaustion  in  defending  your  right  as 
a  free  man  and  an  American  citizen  lawfully  to 
express  your  views. 

"  I  want  to  congratulate  you,  in  the  third 
place,  for  the  masterly  manner  in  conducting 
yourself  and  the  remarkable  qualities  of  good 
sportmanship  shown  in  the  way  in  which  yon 


«  BOGEY  MAN  "  BECOMES  A  HERO     173 

accepted  the  inevitable  and   tried  to  make  the 
world  believe  you  enjoyed  it. 

"  I  want  to  congratulate  you,  in  the  fourth 
place,  for  the  superlative  good  judgment  in  de- 
clining to  accept  for  yourself  the  contributions 
raised  through  the  London  News  and  the  turn- 
ing of  the  same  to  the  benefit  of  the  hospital  for 
blind  soldiers. 

"  I  want  to  congratulate  you,  in  the  fifth  place, 
for  the  fortitude  and  diplomacy  you  have  shown 
toward  other  temperance  representatives  from 
America  and  the  leaders  of  other  temperance 
organizations  in  England  and  the  British  Isles 
other  than  those  which  were  first  recognized  in 
the  formation  of  the  World  League. 

"  I  want  to  congratulate  you,  in  the  sixth  place, 
because  you  have  '  run  true  to  form '  and  have 
been  able  to  more  than  justify  the  confidence 
which  some  of  us  have  always  had  in  your 
ability  to  make  good  on  practically  any  propo- 
sition. 

"  I  want  to  congratulate  you,  in  the  seventh 
place,  for  having  the  privilege  of  rendering  the 
greatest  service  to  the  prohibition  cause  through- 
out the  world,  that  has  ever  been  rendered  by 
one  individual  in  the  space  of  time  which  it  took 
you  to  make  good  in  England. 

"  The  Anti-Saloon  League  of  America  is,  and 
*  of  right  ought  to  be/  proud  of  your  remarkable 
achievement. 

"  Most  cordially  yours, 

"  (Sgd)     ERNEST  H.  CHERRINGTON." 


174        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

Mr.  William  H.  Anderson,  New  York  State 
Superintendent  of  the  League,  another  of  the 
foremost  figures  in  the  American  reform,  sent 
this  message,  dated  November  14,  1919 : 

"  In  the  opinion  of  the  New  York  Office  of 
the  Anti-Saloon  League  you  are  a  Christian 
gentleman  and  a  game  sport. 

"  We  have  read  the  newspaper  accounts  of 
your  '  ragging '  by  a  mob  of  London  medical 
students,  and  we  feel  a  keen  sense  of  pride  in 
the  sportsmanlike  manner  in  which  you  took  the 
experience. 

"  Over  here  they  have  a  way  of  presenting  the 
prohibitionists  as  long-haired,  sour-faced,  kill- 
joys. If  there  are  such — and  we  have  never  met 
them  yet — you  don't  belong  to  that  school. 

"  It  did  us  all  good  to  read  that  when  you  were 
interviewed  after  you  had  been  manhandled  by 
the  mob  you  were  '  cheerful  and  chuckling '  and 
said  you  had  had  '  quite  a  good  time  and  thor- 
oughly enjoyed  it.' 

"  It  made  us  swell  with  pride  to  note  your 
gameness  and  absolute  fairness  in  not  wanting 
the  medical  students  to  be  blamed  for  throwing 
the  missile  which  caused  a  hemorrhage  of  the 
eye  and  in  saying  '  The  police  worked  it  very 
nicely  indeed.' 

"  It  was  a  joy  to  hear — as  we  could  almost 
hear — you  say  '  At  first  I  scrapped  a  little,  but 


«  BOGEY  MAN  "  BECOMES  A  HERO     175 

when  I  found  it  was  a  "  rag  "  then  I  played  the 
game.' 

"  You  have  always  played  the  game  fair  and 
square.  You  have  always  come  up  smiling  and 
you  have  always  won  out  in  the  end.  We  trust 
your  injuries  are  slight.  We  know  the  gains 
to  the  cause  of  decency  and  fair  play  will  be 
great  in  England  as  a  result  of  your  experience. 

"  John  Bull  loves  and  admires  a  good,  clean 
fight  and  you  are  making  one." 


The  resolution  adopted  by  the  Executive 
Committee  of  the  Anti-Saloon  League  of 
America  on  January  19,  1920,  was  as  follows : 

The  Executive  Committee  of  the  Anti-Saloon 
League  of  America  has  learned  with  deep  regret 
of  mal-treatment  of  our  Mr.  W.  E.  Johnson  by 
students  in  London.  Concerning  the  moral  qual- 
ity of  such  treatment  we  do  not  wish  to  say 
more  than  to  express  our  surprise  and  disap- 
pointment that  an  honored  and  eminent  citizen 
of  the  United  States  should  be  so  treated  by  the 
citizens  of  Great  Britain,  when  his  only  offence 
was  to  respond  to  an  invitation  by  Britishers  to 
visit  their  country  and  to  give  testimony  concern- 
ing the  benefits  of  Prohibition  in  America. 

It  is  a  matter  of  great  satisfaction  to  us,  and, 
we  believe,  to  the  American  public  that  English 
public  opinion  as  expressed  by  telegram  and 


176        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

letter,  and  through  the  press,  has  strongly  con- 
demned the  conduct  of  the  students. 

We  hereby  record  our  unbounded  admiration 
for  the  fine  qualities  exhibited  by  Mr.  Johnson 
under  the  trying  circumstances  and  throughout 
his  suffering  and  loss.  While  his  course  in  no 
sense  surprised  us  it  is  none  the  less  gratifying. 
We  congratulate  Mr.  Johnson  upon  the  forti- 
tude, chivalry  and  good  temper  which  he  ex- 
hibited throughout. 

We  would  also  hereby  record  and  instruct  our 
secretary  to  convey  to  Mr.  Johnson  reassurances 
of  our  continued  esteem  and  support  in  his  faith- 
ful and  efficient  services.  We  do  not  believe  that 
such  services  will  fail  of  appreciation  and  moral 
support  from  the  British  public. 


XII 
ENGLAND  "DRY"  BY   1930 

WHEN  the  Englishman  wishes  to  do 
anyone  honor,  he  raises  a  fund 
for  him  or  gives  him  a  public  ban- 
quet. Johnson  had  refused  the  fund,  so  as 
soon  as  he  was  fit  the  temperance  workers 
tendered  him  a  luncheon,  followed  by  a  great 
public  meeting  at  the  Central  Hall,  Westmin- 
ster. The  gathering  was  described  by  the 
Methodist  Times  as  one  of  the  largest,  most 
enthusiastic  and  representative  of  its  kind  ever 
held  in  Britain.  Over  three  thousand  people 
were  present  and  many  could  not  obtain  ad- 
mission. 

"  Our  guest,"  said  Dr.  C.  W.  Saleeby,  who 
presided  at  the  luncheon,  "has  given  his  eye 
to  lighten  the  darkness  of  the  dupes,  victims 
and  parasites  of  the  liquor  trade  and  to  free 
them  from  the  miseries  of  their  condition. 
177 


178        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

He  has  succeeded  in  making  prohibition  in 
Britain  a  live  political  issue  and  it  will  hence- 
forth so  remain." 

"  I  can  see  the  demonstration  just  accorded 
to  me  with  my  glass  eye,"  said  Johnson  when 
the  applause  and  musical  honors  accorded  him 
had  died  down.  "  So  far  as  the  affair  in  Essex 
Hall  was  concerned,  I  do  not  intend  to  grieve 
about  that.  The  benefits  which  I  believe  have 
accrued  to  the  cause  we  have  at  heart  more 
than  outweigh  my  sense  of  personal  injury 
through  the  loss  of  an  eye." 

Sir  Alfred  Pearce  Gould,  the  famous  sur- 
geon, presided  over  the  public  meeting,  and 
it  would  have  been  difficult  to  surpass  it  for 
enthusiasm  and  high  spirits.  When  Johnson 
arose  the  audience  rose  too,  and  applause  ended 
in  the  whole  audience  uniting  in  singing,  "  For 
he's  a  jolly  good  fellow."  "  The  welcome  you 
give  me,"  he  said,  "  reminds  me  of  the  words 
of  King  Agrippa  to  Paul,  '  Almost  thou  per- 
suadest  me  to  be  a — Britisher.' ' 

Was  it  not  possible,  he  asked,  that  under 
the  leadership  of  England's  "  oldest  daughter," 
the  whole  world — and  especially  the  English- 


ENGLAND  "  DRY  "  BY  1930        179 

speaking  world — might  speedily  see  the  end  of 
a  business  which  Gladstone  said  was  a  greater 
curse  than  either  pestilence  or  war  ?  "  If  I  can 
contribute  in  a  small  measure  to  the  consum- 
mation of  this  great  ideal,  I  shall  esteem  it  to 
be  the  highest  privilege  granted  to  me  by  my 
great  Creator,  who  I  believe  is  with  me  in  the 
effort.  Once  again,  may  I  say  '  Thank  you  * 
for  this  magnificent  greeting.  God  bless  you 
all." 

The  strain  and  suffering  before  the  opera- 
tion had  told  on  the  reformer  and  made  it 
necessary  for  him  to  go  for  a  time  to  North 
Africa  to  recover  his  health.  On  his  return 
to  England  he  found  a  very  different  atmos- 
phere awaiting  him  from  the  previous  summer, 
when  he  started  his  London  campaign.  Then 
the  temperance  cause  in  England  had  seemed 
almost  moribund;  now  prohibition  was  in  the 
air. 

The  apathy  of  the  Government  in  dealing 
with  temperance  reform  in  Parliament  and  the 
growing  relaxation  of  the  old  wartime  pro- 
hibition restrictions  were  producing  a  marked 
increase  in  drunkenness  and  in  crimes  due  to 


180        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

drink.  But  many  men  were  convinced  that 
this  in  itself  would,  when  the  right  moment 
came,  lend  real  force  to  the  campaign  for  re- 
form, proving  in  the  clearest  fashion  the  rela- 
tion between  relaxed  control  and  crime.  It 
would  be  too  much  to  say  that  even  then  any 
large  section  of  the  British  people  in  the  United 
Kingdom  were  in  favor  of  prohibition,  but  the 
movement  had  begun  and  great  sections  of  in- 
fluential people  were  beginning  to  openly  avow 
themselves  as  favoring  limitations  of  the 
sale  of  spirits  and  the  heavier  alcoholic  drinks, 
to  a  degree  never  yet  attempted  or  thought 
possible. 

Johnson  was  not  to  be  long  in  England; 
urgent  affairs  were  calling  him  to  America. 
The  great  Encyclopedia  on  Alcohol  which  his 
assistants  there  had  been  working  on  during 
his  absence,  now  required  his  personal  super- 
vision. He  was  wanted  for  a  short  public  cam- 
paign. He  started  from  Southampton  on 
April  1 3th. 

A  day  or  two  before  he  sailed  I  discussed 
with  him  the  outlook  in  the  United  Kingdom. 
I  remembered  how,  some  years  before,  he  had 


ENGLAND  "  DRY  "  BY  1930        181 

prophesied  that  the  United  States  would  be 
"  dry "  by  1920  and  how  his  forecast  had 
come  true.  What  would  happen  in  Eng- 
land? 

"  England  will  be  '  dry '  by  1930,"  the  re- 
former assured  me.  "  That  is  not  my  view 
alone.  *  If  America  stands  firm  and  makes 
good  on  prohibition,  England  will  adopt  the 
same  policy  within  ten  years,'  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  told  a  friend  a  few  weeks  ago.  Many 
heads  of  industry  admit  that  England  must, 
within  a  decade,  follow  America's  example  if 
only  for  economic  reasons,  provided  America 
makes  good. 

"  America  is  going  to  make  good.  Let 
there  be  no  mistake  about  that.  You  will  hear 
much  concerning  reaction,  but  prohibition  has 
come  to  stay.  On  the  surface  the  drink  traffic 
seems  to  be  triumphant  here.  It  is  enormously 
wealthy,  strongly  entrenched,  and  during  the 
past  few  months  has  won  victory  after  victory. 
That  is  a  fact.  It  has  secured  the  relaxation 
of  wartime  restrictions  on  the  sale  of  drink, 
despite  overwhelming  official  proof  of  the 
benefits  of  these  restrictions. 


182        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

"  It  has  obtained  for  itself  such  place  in  the 
very  Government  itself  that  it  can  prevent  for 
the  time  all  effective  temperance  legislation. 
Here  you  have  the  Premier  distinctly  and  sin- 
cerely in  favor  of  reform  of  the  liquor  laws. 
But  you  have  the  representative  brewer  of 
Scotland,  Sir  George  Younger,  holding  the  of- 
fice of  Coalition  Whip,  and  nullifying  by  his 
influence  the  praiseworthy  ardor  of  the 
Premier. 

"  You  may  ask  me  on  what  grounds  then  do 
I  base  my  prediction  of  England  becoming 
*  dry  '  in  ten  years  ?  I  expect  it  first  from  the 
character  of  the  Prime  Minister.  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  is  for  the  moment  unable  to  do  any- 
thing effective.  But  Mr.  Lloyd  George  is 
known  to  be  a  fierce  opponent  of  the  liquor 
traffic,  and  no  man  in  Britain  more  cer- 
tainly has  his  own  way  in  the  end  than  the 
Premier. 

"  I  expect  Britain  to  go  '  dry '  because  of 
what  I  know  of  the  character  of  the  British 
people  themselves.  Here  is  a  nation  that 
studies  facts  and  acts  on  them.  England  has 
led  the  way  in  all  kinds  of  great  reforms,  ex- 


ENGLAND  "  DRY  "  BY  1930       183 

cept  in  the  reform  of  the  liquor  traffic.  Trace 
out  history  for  the  last  hundred  years  and  see 
how  often  Britain  has  been  in  the  van  for 
advance. 

"When  the  Englishman  is  first  offered  a 
new  idea,  he  grouses  at  it  or  ignores  it.  If 
he  grouses,  it's  hopeful.  England  has  been 
passing  through  the  grousing  stage  over  pro- 
hibition. Meetings  have  been  smashed  up  all 
over  the  country.  Now  men  are  beginning  to 
cease  grousing,  and  to  recognize  the  facts. 

"  Two  great  classes  are  being  won,  business 
men,  and  organized  labor.  The  working  man 
knows  what  the  cutting  out  of  the  public  house 
will  mean  for  him. 

"  Drinking  habits  among  employees  mean  a 
loss  of  ten  per  cent  in  efficiency.  That  is  the 
calculation  of  some  of  the  largest  American 
employers.  Great  manufacturers  here  are 
more  and  more  recognizing  that  a  drinking 
nation  cannot  hope  to  compete  economically 
with  a  nation  that  has  finished  with  drink. 
Some  of  the  most  important  gatherings  I  have 
had  here  have  been  with  the  heads  of  great 
undertakings,  who  are  to-day  placing  them- 


184        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

selves  behind  the  prohibition  movement. 
Some  of  them  are  not  even  teetotalers,  but 
they  are  willing  to  have  their  own  whisky  cut 
out  for  the  general  benefit.  The  whole  Eng- 
lish-speaking world  is  moving  our  way.  The 
United  States  is  '  dry ' ;  almost  the  whole  of 
Canada  is  'dry';  the  majority  of  New  Zea- 
land voters  have  supported  prohibition;  Aus- 
tralia is  growing  'dry';  Wales  wants  local 
option,  and  is  only  prevented  from  having  it 
by  the  English  votes;  Scotland  will  declare 
large  areas  '  dry '  in  a  few  months;  both  Ulster 
and  the  south  of  Ireland  will  adopt  local 
option  when  Ireland  has  Home  Rule.  Eng- 
land will  not  remain  permanently  in  the  tail 
of  the  procession.  Like  the  man  from  Mis- 
souri, she  wants  to  be  shown  why.  The 
example  of  her  own  kinsmen  will  show 
her." 

Confident,  smiling,  quiet-spoken,  he  made 
his  farewell. 

A  fortnight  later,  as  his  ship  passed  by  the 
Statue  of  Liberty  in  New  York  harbor,  and 
approached  the  dock  side,  he  was  to  discover 
that  his  own  countrymen  were  preparing  for 


(C)  Topical  Press 


Lxandon  Welcomes  Johnson 


ENGLAND  "  DRY  "  BY  1930       185 

him  a  reception  such  as  Americans  tender  only 
to  those  of  their  own  people  who  have  worthily 
upheld  American  traditions  and  the  American 
name  overseas. 


XIII 
THE  WELCOME  HOME 

WILLIAM  "  PUSSYFOOT  "  JOHN- 
SON, was  welcomed  home  on  his 
return  from  Europe  much  after  the 
manner  of  a  conquering  hero  or  great  states- 
man.     His    New   York    friends  would    fain 
have  staged  a  demonstration,  but  were  per- 
suaded not  to  do  so,  because  of  previous  plans 
made  to  welcome  Mr.  Johnson  to  his  home  and 
office  in  Westerville,  Ohio. 

New  York,  nevertheless,  did  welcome  him. 
He  was  repeatedly  photographed  in  pose  and 
repose.  He  was  interviewed  by  all  the  New 
York  newspapers  and  representatives  of  news 
agencies.  Column  after  column  of  copy  was 
written  about  him,  and  cabled  back  to  Great 
Britain. 

But  it  was  in  Columbus,  the  capital  of  his 
state,  and  seat  of  his  county,  that  his  real 
186 


THE  WELCOME  HOME  187 

reception  began.  There  he  was  met  at  the 
station  by  a  long  procession  of  automobiles,  in 
which  were  crowded  his  neighbors,  officials  of 
Westerville,  representatives  of  the  several 
lodges  of  which  he  is  a  member,  and  other 
friends.  Columbus  was  also  represented 
officially  by  the  Mayor  of  the  city  and  the 
president  and  secretary  of  the  Columbus 
Chamber  of  Commerce. 

Points  of  interest  were  visited  including 
Ohio  State  University,  where  "  Pussyfoot " 
was  met  by  the  faculty  members  and  students. 
He  was  then  conveyed  to  Westerville,  twelve 
miles  away,  stopping  to  be  welcomed  in  the 
neighboring  town  of  Linden. 

Westerville  made  a  general  holiday  of  the 
occasion.  The  town,  decorated  throughout 
with  flags  bore  a  photograph  of  "  Pussyfoot  " 
in  every  window,  Moving  picture  machines  and 
cameras  were  busy.  Newspaper  men  were 
alert  and  appreciative. 

On  the  campus  of  the  Anti-Saloon  League 
Johnson  was  welcomed  by  Dr.  Howard  H. 
Russell,  founder  of  the  League,  in  a  short  ad- 
dress, to  which  Mr.  Johnson  responded. 


188        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

Through  the  crowded  streets  of  his  village, 
Johnson  was  conveyed  and  cheered,  a  band 
leading.  Then  the  students  of  Otterbein  exe- 
cuted a  coup.  They  expressed  themselves  as 
being  desirous  of  "  hazing  "  their  good  friend, 
which  they  did  in  regular  American  college 
fashion,  but  without  bad  results,  such  as  had 
marked  his  treatment  at  the  hands  of  the 
medical  students  of  London.  Requisitioning  a 
decrepit  old  one-horse  buggy,  they  put  Pres- 
ident W.  G.  Clippinger  into  it,  then  rushing 
up  the  street  to  the  head  of  the  automobile 
procession,  captured  "  Pussyfoot ".  He  was  a 
willing  captive. 

Putting  "Pussyfoot"  alongside  "  Prexy," 
the  students  themselves  becoming  the  mo- 
tive power,  pulled  the  buggy  and  its  pas- 
sengers to  the  college  campus,  where  they 
listened  attentively  to  an  address  by  Mr. 
Johnson  in  which  he  proved,  at  least  to  the 
satisfaction  of  the  students,  that  the  Anglo- 
American  tug-of-war  in  which  he  participated 
on  shipboard,  was  won  by  the  American  team, 
because  it  was  captained  by  a  former  Otterbein 
student. 


THE  WELCOME  HOME  189 

Johnson's  first  afternoon  at  home  was  a  con- 
tinuous reception,  affording  him  scanty  time  to 
enjoy  his  first  meal  with  wife  and  daughter. 
His  sons,  Clarence  T.,  who  is  in  Indian  service 
in  California,  and  Clifford  L.,  an  attorney  of 
Washington,  D.  C.,  were  unable  to  be  present 
to  greet  their  father;  Mrs.  Johnson  and  Miss 
Clara  represented  the  family. 

At  the  Presbyterian  Church  on  the  Sunday 
evening  following  his  homecoming,  there  was 
held  a  union  meeting  of  Westerville  churches, 
of  which  church  Johnson  is  a  member.  There 
Johnson  told  of  his  work  abroad  and  of  the 
prospects  for  a  "  dry  "  Britain. 

A  mass  of  wires  and  letters  from  old  as- 
sociates in  the  Western  States  urged  him  to 
speak  in  half  a  hundred  places.  But  his 
itinerary,  carefully  planned,  had  already  been 
arranged.  His  first  address  made  under  that 
itinerary  was  delivered  at  Columbus  on  May  2. 
Then,  in  rapid  succession,  with  at  least  one 
meeting  every  week-day  and  three  on  Sunday, 
Johnson  spoke  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  United  States  telling  of  his 
work  in  Europe,  of  the  need  for  help  in  Eng- 


190        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

land  and  of  the  appeal  which  the  temperance 
forces  of  other  lands  are  making  to  the  tem- 
perance forces  of  America. 

One  of  the  striking  things  about  "  Pussy- 
foot's" welcome  home  is  that  everywhere  he 
was  welcomed,  greeted  and  cheered  regardless 
of  his  affiliations,  beliefs  and  work.  Naturally 
enough  the  "  drys  "  were  glad  to  see  him,  but 
it  was  a  big  surprise  to  find  that  men  not  at 
all  of  his  way  of  thinking  were  just  as  cordial 
in  their  welcome  as  were  those  of  his  own 
household  of  faith. 

Newspaper  articles,  especially  editorials,  re- 
flected the  general  feeling.  Throughout  a  great 
mass  of  news  and  comment  one  could  not  find 
a  discordant  note.  Johnson  was  everywhere 
praised  as  a  good  man,  an  honest  man,  a  good 
sport.  Many  who  do  not  believe  in  prohibition 
declared  that  if  Johnson  were  a  true  sample 
of  prohibitionists,  then  the  cause  he  stood  for 
was  invincible. 

And  the  interest  in  the  man  lasted.  Idaho 
was  not  on  the  schedule  of  his  tour.  Yet  Idaho 
wanted  him  so  badly,  that  citizens  of  Twin 
Falls  arranged  to  convey  him  by  airplane  from 


THE  WELCOME  HOME  191 

his  train  at  Granger,  Wyo.,  to  their  town  and 
thence  to  catch  the  same  train  again  at  Sho- 
shone. 

As  has  been  pointed  out  by  many  speakers 
and  editors,  Mr.  Johnson  might  have  made  an 
appeal  on  the  strength  of  losing  an  eye  in 
the  cause  of  prohibition.  He  might,  too,  have 
fallen  back  on  his  own  popularity,  a  popularity 
which  existed  long  before  he  went  to  England, 
and  which  was  merely  increased  by  what  hap- 
pened abroad.  He  might  have  signed  up  (at  a 
very  attractive  financial  figure),  with  some  of 
the  numerous  interests  that  wanted  to  capitalize 
him.  Yet  he  did  none  of  those  things.  The 
very  humility  of  the  man  was  one  of  the  chief 
things  that  appealed  to  the  crowd,  especially  to 
that  portion  of  it  not  in  accord  with  his  pro- 
hibition views. 

In  short,  Mr.  Johnson's  speaking  tour  of  the 
United  States  was  a  veritable  triumph.  The 
usual  "  ballyhoo  "  and  publicity  methods  were 
not  resorted  to.  He  is,  first  of  all,  able  to  take 
care  of  himself  in  any  place  or  under  any 
circumstances.  He  is  a  good  newspaper  man. 
He  knows  how  to  "  spin  a  yarn,"  to  dig  up 


192        "PUSSYFOOT"  JOHNSON 

a  feature  for  an  interviewer  or  to  furnish 
material  for  a  "  story."  Not  only  does  he 
know  how  to  do  all  this,  but  he  has  lived 
through  all  of  it.  In  his  case  there  is  some- 
thing to  write  about,  and  resort  to  usual  press 
agent  methods  has  not  been  necessary. 

Johnson  tells  everybody  he  is  soon  going 
back  to  Great  Britain.  He  expects  to  be  over 
there  a  year  in  aid  of  the  campaign  of  the  drys, 
especially  in  Scotland.  That  he  will  carry  on 
an  active  and  effective  program  none  can 
doubt. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  add  to  this 
appreciation  of  Mr.  Johnson's  personality  and 
his  effective  work,  the  following  editorial  from 
the  New  York  Times: 

"  Mr.  William  E.  Johnson,  affectionately 
known  as  '  Pussyfoot,'  is  back  in  his  native 
land  after  his  adventures  and  triumphs  abroad. 
With  undiminished  good  nature  he  jokes  at 
the  glass  eye  which  is  a  memorial  of  the  un- 
intended barbarity  of  the  London  Ben  Aliens 
and  Tom  Sawyers,  and  foresees  a  dry  world. 
Probably  in  another  ten  years  England  will 
be  dry."  France  is  growing  drier.  Esthonia 


THE  WELCOME  HOME  193 

is  "  on  the  wagon."  Even  India,  among  whose 
woes  we  scarcely  remember  to  have  seen  alco- 
hol included  before,  will  be  rescued  by  Govern- 
ment prohibition  before  long.  In  short,  every- 
thing is  for  the  best  for  the  best  of  causes.  It 
is  mighty  well,  and  the  radiant  optimism  and 
immitigable  cheerfulness  of  Mr.  Johnson  are 
beyond  praise.  .  .  .  He  is  the  kind  of  a  pro- 
hibitionist that  the  most  devoted  opponents  of 
prohibition  have  a  fondness  for.  He  has  an 
ample  sense  of  humor.  He  is  as  gay  as  the 
gayest  old-fashioned  bacchanalian  song.  He 
can  take  and  give  a  joke.  No  heckling  ruffles 
him.  If  anybody  can  persuade  and  win  the 
wicked,  it  is  a  man  of  his  type.  For  years  the 
late  Sir  Wilfrid  Lawson,  the  famous  foe  of 
drink,  was  the  wittiest  man  in  the  British 
House  of  Commons.  Why  should  the  devil 
have  all  the  good  tunes  ?  He  doesn't  so  long  as 
there  is  a  "Pussyfoot"  Johnson  to  temper 
the  rigor  of  those  prohibitionists  who  are  a  bit 
too  good  for  human  nature's  daily  food." 


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